Cyberattacks and data breaches have witnessed a troubling surge worldwide.
Obviously nobody wants their personal information to come out on public, but data breaching has made access to such sensitive information bringing more threats to civic life. As per recent reports, "personal information of more than 81.5 crore Indians, purportedly obtained from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), was exposed online." Therefore, the question lies on how to stay protected? On this national computer security day, let's follow some key steps to stay protected against cyberattacks.
Securing every devices and online accounts with passwords is one of the most important ways to keep own data safe. Unfortunately, not many people take this seriously. People try to keep password weak like ‘12345’ or ‘password’ so that they can remember for a long time. Nowadays, hackers use some of the most sophisticated techniques to easily crack passwords in seconds. So, you need a strong combination that will keep your data hidden.
The strongest passwords must contain at least 8 characters with a mixture of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers as well as special characters. Different profiles should be protected with a brand new combination so that you don't have repeating passwords, especially for sensitive work-related accounts. Avoid using children’s names, address, or even dates of birth.
Two-factor authentication needs two separate verification methods while trying to log in to accounts. In Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), the first step of authentication is through using a correct password, whereas the second can be depending on the platform. You may also be asked to provide different email address or a phone number where the access code or One-time password is delivered.
This additional layer of security makes sure hackers won’t be able to breach even if they successfully guess the password.
Phishing is one of the most famous scamming methods used nowadays to steal vulnerable information like gathering any company’s data. Hackers usually create generic messages implementing scare tactics to encourage users to click on a specific link or even download any attached file. As soon as you click on the link, your device becomes compromised and hackers infiltrate your most sensitive information. As per recent reports, "There are over 3.4 billion phishing emails sent out every day."
There are some important steps to check before opening any such links. You must watch out for grammatical mistakes, unusual requests, odd spelling, or any click-bait links that sound too good to be true. Do check carefully every letter in the email address.
As organizations are encouraging Cloud storage, employees are allowed to perform their assigned tasks from the comfort of their own home or a public space. However, remote work removes all sorts of cyber protection. It's advisable to not perform any professional duty connecting to an unsecured WiFi network in public place. Any hackers can intercept public networks easily and break into every device connected to them. This increases the risk of malwares, like worms and viruses, performing a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack, and so on.
On a remote workplace, protect your devices with a VPN. Data encryption will protects you from harmful hackers. By setting up a connection to a VPN server before using any public hotspot, you’ll become invisible to hacker's eyes.
While working, you must turn on your firewall to check incoming traffic as even a small weakness in device can lead to data breaching. It's always suggested to install proper Antivirus Software. It will search for malware by scanning and if found, it will swiftly eradicate the threat. Additionally, updating software on is crucial to protect your data at work. Software organizations update their products to remove any bugs and release new products through new software updates. Always create seperate backups of your whole system. Many experts also suggest to have web filtering services to stop automatic uploads.
Always remember that, cyber attackers keep on altering and improving their techniques to breach your protection. Thus, you need yo stay up-to-date on all security policies as well as the newest cyber security methods.
