Recently, there has been a lot of chatter from people concerned that their devices connecting to the internet may be compromised or experiencing issues.
For many of these devices, you might not need to be concerned, as long as you are making a habit of following a few ‘good housekeeping’ best practices when it comes to cybersecurity.
I want to take a few minutes to remind you of a few easy ways you can make sure your devices—both in the office and at home—are secure.
Even if your device hasn’t been hacked, your accounts may be vulnerable because your email addresses and passwords have been compromised, published on the Dark Web.
If a website you log into has been compromised, it’s possible for someone to gain access to a user’s email and passwords—ultimately giving a bad actor access to your account information.
For instance, if you had logged into a compromised site, your login information could end up in the wrong hands. From there, people might be able to gain access to your credentials, causing you a LOT of headaches.
If you’ve logged into Drop Box, Facebook, or one of the several dozen of popular sites compromised within the past year, hackers may have compromised your user credentials for that platform.
Even scarier, if you use that password or password variations for work accounts or sensitive personal accounts (think bank accounts for instance), you may be giving away more information through a social media login than you might expect. Hackers eventually may find and test other more important logins—including those on devices connecting to the internet—leaving you, your family and work place all vulnerable to further attacks.
We’ve seen many instances recently where users use the same or similar passwords at work and for leisure. Bottom line: do not reuse your passwords.
We take protecting your network very seriously. For added password security, our team is interested in protecting your user’s credentials. If you are concerned about your team’s passwords getting leaked, ask your BTM about tracking your team’s credentials on the Dark Web.
While we can’t prevent data breaches from the internet, we’re committed to limiting the impact of a breach on your work-specific user credentials.
We continue to introduce additional security and safety precautions to keep your network and your teams safe at work.
But as I mentioned above, there are a few simple ways to keep your accounts secure at work and at home:
Enable 2-factor verification—one of the most important ways to protect your users from getting their accounts hacked is considering using 2-factor authentication technology to authenticate their identities. Security experts agree that 2-factor verification adds an additional layer of security that makes it quite a bit harder for hackers to crack into user accounts.
Choose strong passwords—create a strong password and only use it for a specific account. Try to avoid using familiar words, names, numbers and places that hackers might be able to easily crack into.
Be on the lookout—be on the lookout for phishing emails designed to trick your users into sharing their email addresses or passwords.
Protect your home network—make sure to keep your home network router software updated and share your credentials only with people you trust. If you want to have guests use their WiFi, be sure to set up a guest network (as you would in your office). This is especially important if you work from home or bring your work computer home.
Security is a big deal these days. We all need to take responsibility in protecting our identities online. If you have any questions, be sure to reach out (that’s what we’re here for!).
