While most large data breaches are out of your control, there are some quick and easy procedures you and your business can take to give you the best chance of avoiding being targeted by cyber criminals.
- Use unique password details – this may sound obvious but how many of us really do it? If you’re worried about remembering lots of complex passwords, you might want to consider a password manager which keeps all your more detailed logins in one safe location.
A great tip for creating unique passwords is to think of a short sentence that you’ll remember and take random letters out to create one. For example, if your random sentence was ‘the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’ you could take the first letter of each word and create ‘TQBFJOTLD1’.
- Don’t send personal details via email – Email accounts are one of the most common systems to hack and could act as a skeleton key to your entire online life if you have sent yourself passwords or other family members logins.
It doesn’t take much for cyber criminals to go through hacked email accounts for all your personal details and sensitive conversations which you thought were private, which can then be used as gateways to further fraud.
- Oversharing on social media – It’s worth noting that updating things such as Instagram and Twitter with your amazing holiday photos with location tags can let cyber criminals know that you’re not home.
For extra peace of mind, you might want to lock down your social media accounts whilst you’re away or set them to private. Your snap might not hit that elusive 100+ likes on your Instagram, but it means you’re more likely to keep the scammers out.
Check out a full blog we posted late last year all about how social media can invalidate your insurance here.
- Use two factor authentication – Two factor authentication affords you another security layer of protection against someone simply knowing your username and password. There’s software out there which will ask for more information and go that little bit further to protect your details.
Authy is a particularly good solution to this as it goes beyond the standard and gives lots of helpful tips and hints to protecting your most regular logins. Check out the website here to learn more.
These are the thoughts and suggestions of the Bennett Christmas Group and do not form any specific recommendation. You should seek professional advice for a more specific view on your own circumstances.