HootSuite Expands Social Media Security and Compliance Offering with Nexgate Partnership

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Sept. 5, 2013) -

Editors Note: There is a photo associated with this Press Release.

Today, HootSuite, the most widely adopted social relationship management platform, announces a new partnership with Nexgate, a leader in enterprise social media security, to protect brands and address the increasing compliance and policy management requirements facing social media practitioners. This new partnership provides HootSuite Enterprise customers with a comprehensive compliance solution that protects their brand and secures their organization's social media network environments from employee misuse, hackers, spam, hate, and malware.

With well over seven million users and growing, HootSuite has customers in nearly every country who use its social relationship platform to securely manage social marketing, social customer service and social selling. While large organizations have the opportunity to amplify their messages and engage with customers at unprecedented levels using social media, this reach and engagement has created new security and compliance issues that are only now being addressed.

In a July 2013 report titled The Social Media Legal and Regulatory Landscape, analyst firm Forrester Research discussed the importance of social media risk management: "The rapid rise of social media throughout the business world has left organizations and regulators in all industries scrambling to play catch-up. Social media changes how we interact with fellow employees, develop business relationships with our customers, and build the company brand; it also creates a slew of new regulatory and compliance "gray" areas."

The Nexgate partnership with HootSuite Enterprise is a complete brand protection solution that addresses these issues as a risk management solution for social businesses, inclusive of:

• Policy Management: Nexgate's patent-pending policy management features allow large organizations to establish specific policies for business units, divisions, and groups as part of their workflow. Whether meeting FINRA, HIPAA, SEC, and PCI standards or custom policies, organizations are empowered with monitoring and compliance controls.

• Pre-Publish Content Scanning: HootSuite automatically passes social media posts through Nexgate to ensure all content conforms with acceptable use and compliance policies, including scanning all URLs for threats or risks.

• Automated Content Moderation: Nexgate automates content filtering across all social channels. This allows admins to set action types to log or delete and send notifications about a particular post, Tweet, or comment that violates set policies. All comments and posts can also be archived for future auditing.

• Advanced Security and Compliance: Nexgate ProfileLock™ helps prevent hackers and hijackers from co-opting brand-owned accounts. Customers can create custom alerts to notify when changes are made to account profiles. Organizations can also set up social media archiving and compliance reporting for access to spot checks and audits.

• Automated Account Discovery: Automatically find, categorize, and monitor social media accounts affiliated with a brand using Nexgate's patent-pending advanced social search technology.

"Social media has become the frontline of many organizations for real-time engagement with their customers. In turn, online security breaches can really hurt a brand's image and consequently its bottom line. Thankfully these crises are avoidable," says Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite. "Our partnership with Nexgate ensures that our clients are equipped with a comprehensive set of social media security tools to protect their businesses. I'm thrilled for this Nexgate partnership and what it means for Enterprise-level security and compliance."

"Managing risk and compliance is a big challenge for organizations with large enterprise brands," says Devin Redmond, Co-Founder and CEO of Nexgate. "Our partnership with HootSuite combines the leading technologies for enterprise social media management and security and compliance to stop account hacks, automate content moderation, and ensure compliance."

"I am excited to see this partnership and integration between HootSuite and Nexgate," says Eric Ludwig, Vice President and General Manager of US Consumers at Rosetta Stone. "HootSuite is a key marketing, engagement, and collaboration solution for us and Nexgate helps us use HootSuite more effectively. This partnership increases our ability to protect our social accounts, keep our audiences safe, and meet regulatory requirements all while improving our efficiency and ROI."

HootSuite Enterprise, used by global brands like Investec, ING DIRECT, Tower Hill Insurance Group, Inc., Seagate, Virgin, PepsiCo, Sony Music Entertainment, FOX, WWF, and 744 of the Fortune 1000 companies, is built for enterprise businesses. With the most advanced tools and services available for security, collaboration, engagement, and analytic measurement of your social media strategy, HootSuite Enterprise is built to bring brands their social ROI.

To learn more about HootSuite's partnership with Nexgate, register for our upcoming webinar entitled "Secure your Social Enterprise with HootSuite and Nexgate" on Thursday, September 12, 2013 featuring Ray Kruck, Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer of Nexgate, and Kevin Zellmer, Global Director of Enterprise Business Development of HootSuite.

More information:

• Register for Webinar: http://ow.ly/olGHF
• Blog Post: http://blog.hootsuite.com/nexgate-security-compliance
• HootSuite Enterprise: http://enterprise.hootsuite.com
• Media Kit: http://media.hootsuite.com/media-kit

About HootSuite

HootSuite is a social relationship platform for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ Pages from one secure, web-based dashboard. Advanced functionality includes tools for audience engagement, team collaboration, account security and comprehensive analytics for end-to-end measurement and reporting. To learn more, visit: http://www.hootsuite.com.

About Nexgate

Nexgate provides cloud-based brand protection and compliance for enterprise social media accounts. Its patent-pending technology seamlessly integrates with the leading social media platforms and applications to find and audit brand affiliated accounts, control connected applications, detect and remediate compliance risks, archive communications, and detect fraud and account hacking. To learn more, visit http://www.nexgate.com.

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