The UK newspaper industry’s trade body has urged for new ruling to be implemented regarding social media sites, regulation, and their funding contribution to journalism. This could mean sites such as Google and Facebook would take on both financial and legal responsibility in relation to content published on their platforms.

The News Media Association (NMA), which represents the majority of local and national newspapers in the UK, also urged Facebook to fund newspapers who have their stories featured in newsfeeds, regardless of whether the stories are read.

The NMA also urged the government to implement a tax credit system, similar to that of British film industry investment, which enables newspapers to claim cash rebates for investment in ventures such as investigative journalism.

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, which means organisations should be considering their current cybersecurity measures in an effort to prevent data breaches and cyber threats. The need to improve cybersecurity has also been amplified since results from the Cyber Security Breach Survey 2018 established that 43% of businesses have suffered a data breach in the last 12 months.

Small businesses especially should be evaluating their cybersecurity measures, as according to research from security firm Sitelock, smaller organisations are actually more at risk of a website hack, mainly due to their lack of cybersecurity and website maintenance.

Laura Dodge, Marketing Manager at Pedalo, the web development agency discussed the indispensability of implementing cybersecurity and website maintenance, stating:

Experts believe that the greatest threat to an organisation is not its lack of cybersecurity, it is actually the employees who tend to cause the most damage.

This comes after 77% of survey respondents indicated that regardless of training and adherence to company policies, it is actually employees that are the main source of cyber-attacks, as they may be unaware of the warning signs. Therefore, it is vital that companies improve cybersecurity training by implementing ways for staff to protect, as well as how to conduct themselves online, especially on social media.

As social media is an integral part of engagement - and with that comes an inherent level of trust - meaning it is vital that everybody is aware of what is safe when positing content. This is particularly the case for employees who are responding to their customers, as they must be aware of online actors who utilise fake accounts in order to pose as customers and purposely target staff and the organisation.