With the recent global cyber-attack, cybersecurity is on everyone’s minds, from the richest business tycoons to people who just want to keep their family’s information safe. While you may not have many assets that are particularly tempting to hackers, it’s still very important for consumers to make sure their digital walls are secure. Here, we’ll list some of the crucial cybersecurity tips everyone should follow…
Look at your Digital Footprint
Like everyone else, your digital footprint is huge, and can never be erased. Sure, there are social media features that allow you to schedule the deletion of your posts in advance, but there’s no big “delete” button you can use to erase the entire history of your internet use. Attempting this would be a long and complicated process, and ultimately only partially successful. With your information scattered all over the web, it’s important to think about the valuable information you have online, and where it is. How many sites have your credit card information? How many have an updated card number and expiry date? Where are all your important files, images and videos in terms of online storage? By taking stock of where your information is stored, and deleting accounts you don’t use anymore, you’ll remove several chinks in your armor.
Prioritize Sensitive Accounts
After taking stock and doing a little housekeeping, you can start to prioritize your most sensitive accounts, and ensure you’re tightening security in the most key areas. We’re not just talking about online shopping here. Even the video streaming service you use can be the entry point for a damaging breach, as this article on Securethoughts explains. Start prioritizing your online accounts according to the sensitivity of the data on them, such as financial information, personal health records, etc. If you’ve got a lot of accounts you need to cover, you might want to classify them as low, medium and high in terms of risk. Just think about each individual account, and how much of a problem it would be if the sensitive information contained within them fell into the wrong hands. Once you’ve determined the accounts that pose the greatest threat to you and your family, you can move onto the final, and in some ways most crucial step…
Set the Strongest Possible Access Control
Go through your most sensitive accounts, one by one, and work on elevating the level of security and privacy on each one. This means making sure you have strong passwords, changing your security questions, moving up to even higher levels of authentication where it’s offered, and more comprehensive privacy settings. When you’re changing any security questions (a common tool for a lot of hackers who target private accounts) you don’t need to make the answers accurate, just memorable. Answers to these questions can be guessed or determined easily, especially with the amount of information we publish on social media these days. As a failsafe, just write it down. As sophisticated as modern hackers might be, they can’t access that scrap of paper on your desk!
