October Marks National Cyber Security Awareness Month

October is not only a time to celebrate Fall festivities, but also a time to ensure your cyber security is working well and keeping you safe from cyber criminals. No matter what type of technology you might use to access sensitive data, it’s important to know what tools you can use to help keep you safe.

First off, remember that while it is very important to have technology and programs that help assist in keeping your information secure, your information cannot stay secure without YOU. Attackers have found that the easiest way to get what they want is to target you instead of your computer or other devices. Thieves are after your credit card information, passwords to various websites you use, and sometimes, control of your computer. But how do they get a hold of this information? Simply by tricking you into giving it to them usually under a false sense of urgency. A good example is the cyber criminals would call you pretending to be tech support and claim that your computer is infected. In reality, they are just trying to gain access to your computer. They also might send an email pretending to be a co-worker who needs access to something on your computer and requesting for you to click on a link to confirm your information. This email is not really from a coworker and is deceiving you into visiting a malicious website that will then hack into your computer. Remember- the greatest defense against hackers will always be YOU.

Second, always make sure you have a very strong password that is different for every site you have log in credentials for.  Passwords that are eight characters or shorter are not very well protected and are vulnerable to cyber criminals. Always create a strong and unique passphrase for a password. For example, cow milk bananas apples. The longer the passphrase is, the more protected your personal information will be. When you have a lot of log on credentials to remember, you can utilize a password manager, which is a specialized program that securely stores all your passphrases in a format that is encrypted. It is also a great idea to set up a two step verification process. This usually means you will enter your password and then also enter a code sent to your smartphone or from an app that generates the code for you. This is one of the most important steps you can take to protect your private information.

Third, ensure that all your devices and programs are always running on the latest version of the software. Cyber criminals are always looking for loopholes and cracks of vulnerability in the systems you use. Then they use special programs to exploit these vulnerabilities. When companies come across these vulnerabilities, they fix them as quickly as possible in the form of updates, which is why it is so important to keep your programs and devices up-to-date. If you are able, it is best to set up automatic updates, so you do not have to worry about if you have the latest version or not. This includes smartphones, computers, inter-connected TVs, security cameras, baby monitors, gaming consoles and even your car.

Finally, no matter how careful you are, you can still potentially be hacked. If this happens to you, the only way to restore all your personal information is from backing it up. Ensure you make regular backups of all important information and confirm that you can restore your data from them. Many operating systems and mobile devices provide automatic backups to either external drives or to a cloud environment. Taking these important steps will help to secure your private information and protect your identity.

Check out these tips from the Department of Homeland Security: https://www.dhs.gov/stopthinkconnect-toolkit