Case Study Analysis: Facebook Security Issues and Strategies

This case study examines the security challenges faced by Facebook, focusing on data breaches and privacy concerns. It delves into the background of the issues, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal and software flaws that compromised user data. The analysis identifies five key strategies to improve Facebook's security posture: listening to users, leveraging third-party partners responsibly, simplifying activities for users, establishing quick response teams for security incidents, and educating users about online safety. The study emphasizes the importance of these strategies in regaining user trust and ensuring the platform's long-term viability. By implementing these measures, Facebook can enhance its security, protect user data, and maintain its position as a leading social media platform. The case study underscores the need for a proactive approach to security and privacy in the digital age, advocating for continuous improvement and user education.

CASE STUDY ANALYSIS
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Introduction
The case study analysis is going to be structured on the issues regarding the security
aspects of Facebook. It has been associated with discovering a severe problem that is about
hackers getting accessed to all the information over fifty million accounts. There are five
effective strategies that can improve the situation and will help the most prominent social
platform to dissolve all its issues. The strategies are listening to the users, third-party
partners, simplifying activities for users, quick response teams for security purposes, and
educating users. Thus, all five strategies will incur a better understanding of controlling
security and privacy and will allow the most significant website to sort out its issues
adequately. The primary purpose is to analyze the critical issues, further consequences and
the application of the five strategies so that it can benefit the readers to understand the case
study and to stimulate their ideas and thoughts effectively.

Discussion
1. Background of the Case Study:
The case study has been attached to the security issues that have allowed all the
hackers to gather more information for all across eighty-seven million users on Facebook.
British analytics have somehow managed to get access to all the information of million users
and have led to several deaths. The government of the United States has been associating
with the issues where they want to set effective laws to protect all the personal information of
the users like name, sex, home location and so on. Congress stated that a significant
investigation about the severe privacy and security issues so that they can gather more data
about such a difficult situation. Specific news was discovered such as three software flaws
that were initiated by the Facebook system that unfortunately gave access to break into the
accounts of the users. In this way, it can be accessible to other social networking sites as well
such as Instagram, Spotify and so on. The software update was two primary reasons, such as
improving the privacy setup for the users, and the second one was to develop a tool for
generating birthday videos.
Since the situation is quite critical to handle so, Facebook tried to fix issues by
enforcing notified law agents and identifying the origin of these attackers. The investigation
was still following up to dissolve the problems as soon as possible and Facebook had
requested its ninety million users to remove their accounts so that they can fix the bugs
adequately. Certain harmful rumors have been creating a cause to lead several deaths all
across the worldwide. Especially, with its ‘view as’ feature has exploited their personal
information and will try to control over its privacy and security settings. Therefore, they need
to adapt five essential strategies that may recover the situation, including listening to the
users, third-party partners, simplifying activities for users, quick response teams for security
purposes, and educating users.

2. Effective Strategies:
a. Listening to the Users:
Facebook should allow its users to communicate with them regarding any issue or
contributing any suggestion. They should spend excessive time in understanding the
necessities, queries, demands and requests. A major drawback that Facebook has been facing
for quite a few years that they are not providing enough time to all the users so that they can
generate their individual suggestions regarding any new software updates (Lovari & Parisi,
2015). Users should be their main priority as they will ensure immense profits in the
upcoming future and will assure a significant growth.
Facebook is the biggest platform where several activities are getting registered every
single day such as engaged in promoting goods and services, supporting massive and small
businesses and connecting with zillions of customers from all across the world (Ranzini &
Hoek, 2017). Thus, it’s high time they should listen to all their customers and even one by
one if necessary or simply create a survey and should collect all the essential feedbacks from
their users. Therefore, it will help in securing the accounts and will help them to understand
that how new updates are performing or whether helping the users adequately. Thus, risks can
be managed in the early hours and will help them to rectify their mistakes or fix any bug from
their system.
b. Third-party partners:
Facebook has been acquainted with several third-party partners and have started to
share several types of information with them. Now the question arises that whether it is safe
to trust the third-party partners as they may disclose it to other companies or social websites
(Ahmadinejad & Fong, 2013, May). There are numerous privacy advocates that have been
associated with cases where different kinds of policies have been ruined because of such
third-party partners.

Thus, it is an essential responsibility from the side of Facebook to trust only those
parties with which they are attached with couple of years and should share that much
information that can be acknowledged and rectified if any problem occur at any point of time.
It does not signify that one should not trust the third-party partners but the first priority is
users, and if somehow they get affected, then things will never be recovered (Intahchomphoo,
2019). A huge loss will be attached to Facebook and will ruin the situations. Therefore, they
should certify all the essential documents from the third party partners and should gather
enough details to trust them regarding any matter.
c. Simplifying activities for users:
As the days are passing, Facebook is making things even more complicated and new
users may not understand a lot of things that may risk their personal information in front of
public. The users should be granted with easiest ways to deal with their activities, privacy
settings and their respective profiles (Zheng, Zhao & Stylianou, 2013). Thus, an individual
should be informed with adequate knowledge and other notifications should be kept under
high security so that no one can get access to those essential data. Therefore, it will benefit
their users to detect if any issue has been occurring or have occurred and should be informed
with appropriate measures to rectify their problems by themselves.
They should invest more time in developing such a software, where all the users can
easily get notified about any malfunction or any intruder so that they can take any action
against such cases. Thus, they should simplify all the essential parts in their settings and they
can approach with any process easily without getting confused with any other systems
(Mendes et al., 2015, August). Therefore, it is their duty to ensure easier settings
management, and needs to work hard enough on involving significant steps to help
themselves appropriately. Thus, it will provide better and effective options to all the users and

Facebook will earn more profit and expandable growth will be recognized in the upcoming
years (Külcü & Henkoğlu, 2014).
d. Quick response team for Security Purposes:
The first and foremost essential step Facebook should take is to build up a firm quick
response team for further security purposes and should improve their loosely handled
settings. Although, the organization has been acquainted with several such security teams in
each and every area (Weedon, Nuland & Stamos, 2017). Yet, they need to come up with the
top-most effective team including expertise and several other professionals so that they can
remove all the problems within a second or at least within least amount of time.
They are required to improve their individual set-up such as removing an immediate
harmful bug, fixing any scams, and other malware functions that has been found in this social
networking site. Thus, they should come up with an immediate solution and should
demonstrate to all the users that it’s a serious problem that they should generate adequate
coordination and cooperation of their expertise to overcome such issues (Bissessar, 2014).
The quick-response team should also look into the matters such as limiting the influence of
necessary privacy breaches, and it actually helps in regaining the trust from the users and
improves the insignificant situations.
e. Educating Users:
Lastly, the most essential and prominent aspect that requires more attention and it
may not be that easy as it looks but it will slowly benefit the organization in numerous ways
(Gulenko, 2013). It is necessary enough to encourage the users to learn all the adequate
information and the desired details that will help in improving and developing their
individual knowledge about social networking sites (De Villiers & Pretorius, 2013). There is
no end to know about new things regarding Facebook and they should try to indulge more

users to learn about the latest things. At least they should not battle with their smartphones to
secure their data and should manage their security and privacy systems (Sari & Sihotang,
2016).
Conclusion
Therefore, the concluding paragraph, is to summarize all the details and they are all
concerned on improving their security and privacy systems. Thus, users, along with the
company should follow all the five strategies and should learn to rectify their issues in an
appropriate manner. Facebook should maintain certain rules and regulations regarding quick-
response team so that they can provide an immediate solution to all the necessary problems.
Facebook will surely recover its situations if they continue to practice all the strategies and
should generate a totally new set of improvements for the users in their upcoming updates.

References
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