5 Ways to Protect Yourself this Cyber-Security Awareness Month

It’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month and King IT is all about keeping your identity and digital information safe. As we shift into the next decade cybersecurity is quickly becoming more imperative in keeping our lives safe online. For those of us who grew up not really having to think so much about this threat, it is important now more than ever to entertain the thought that it’s probably worth spending some time setting yourself up with the proper countermeasures.

You don’t want to find yourself in the inconvenient and sometimes disastrous situation of having your digital information leaked onto the internet. It can include being locked out of your online accounts or social media (as well as potentially locking other people out as well), to hackers getting access to your bank account and withdrawing a whole bunch of assets ($$$).

There are solutions if data is compromised (that's what we do at King IT) but the further a security breach gets out of hand the greater the time and effort needed to rectify it. If ignored too long it can have some very detrimental effects on your life.

So here are a couple of easy things that you can do to protect yourself from cybersecurity breaches, and thus prevent yourself from ever facing such a drama.

1. Stop using reusable passwords and get a password manager.

If you are using one password for everything, once one account is breached you are gambling with whether that hacker (or whoever they decide to give those passwords to) will breach other accounts as well, especially if it is something super easy to remember. It puts you in the unhelpful position of having to change ALL your passwords (if of course you can remember all the accounts you are using that password with).

Having unique passwords for all your accounts is a sure-fire way to solve this problem. We don’t expect you to remember random letter and number combinations so having a password manager do that for you is a way to set and forget.

Google has its own password manager so if you use google you can set up a google account and have it remember all your passwords. As you browse it will auto-fill every time you need to log-in somewhere. If you use a Mac or iPhone user, they make use of built-in keychain access to prompt you whether you want to store a password.

If you really want control and are willing to pay for something a bit more premium and user friendly you can choose from such programs as 1password, NordPass, Keeper, or LastPass to name a few. They have end-to-end encryption so if you are sending sensitive information via email for instance, these apps usually have ways they protect you in that area as well.

It’s not really something you want to be thinking about so its well worth the investment.

2. Use two step authentications where you can

Generally, any site that has access to your bank account (eBay for instance), has a lot of personal information (like social media) having two step authentication is a must.

Most of the time this involves sending a SMS text to your phone or an email. It’s an extra step which is annoying but an attacker will need to access your account and your phone or email for that. We recommend your phone, as you know, you have your phone not an attacker. Accessing your SMS is much more work and usually you have a timer on these things so they would have to access it the same time as logging in, and well… you are going to know, being the keeper of your phone.

3. Be wary of handing out your credit card details

If you don’t have a PayPal account and you shop online from time to time, it's definitely worth setting up an account. It doesn’t take long and its free. Paypal is great because it acts as a bridge between your bank and the place you are buying from. It gives you a great safety net if a sale goes awry and it adds an extra third-party wall of security to your purchase. Most vendors will have the option to go through PayPal. You don't want to be handing out that information if you can help it.

4. Slow down and think about what you are clicking on.

Look, it’s worth taking a moment and assessing whether a link or an email looks a bit dodgy. If it is an unusual request, playing to your fears or too good to be true it’s probably worth taking a step back and questioning the validity of it. Obviously don’t be handing your credit card details, driver’s license and phone number out online unless you are REAL sure the other party is trustworthy. 

5. Use your Anti-Virus Software and keep it updated

This might seem like an obvious one to some users, but if you have taken no real interest in it before it might be worth just having a look at what is actually protecting your device, whether it be your computer or phone. Understanding your settings and what they are doing can have a varied amount of learning curve dependent on how tech-savvy you are, but it’s well worth popping open the hood to see what is actually there. All devices have their own built in security measures and as simple as it sounds, check to see that they are actually ON and working.

If you have a few devices that are sending information to each other a lot, and some of that information is sensitive, consider linking them via a third-party virus/malware/ransomware detection and removal tool that can oversee all those accounts.

Remember you can always come into King IT and talk to our friendly staff about cybersecurity options if all this information seems a bit daunting. They can set you on the proper path to get your device or device network in the best position.

We want you to keep all your data where it should be… with you.