Did you know, in 2018 a study found that 95% of data breaches could have been prevented? During this critical public health emergency many of us are sheltering in place and working from home, but so are hackers. For many industries, a data breach could cause financial ruin, and with more and more people working remotely, more and more information is vulnerable to an attack. Is your data safe at home?
Today we will share 5 tips on how to secure your home to protect your work:
Be aware of phishing scams
A phishing scam is when someone sends out an altered link to something you may be very familiar with, in the hopes that you click it and enter your username and password. This can be something like a bank you belong to or your Amazon account. They will send you an email that makes it look like you are going to Amazon, but it is a fake site made to look the same as the one you are used to seeing. This can make phishing schemes hard to identify. That is why you should always look at a few things: the sender of the email’s address and domain, URL of the site you were taken to, and for typos or bad grammar. These are often signs that the email is malicious and unsecure. For more details on this please feel free to request the webinar recording and slide deck here. They have examples with screenshots of this type of malicious activity.
Secure your Wi-Fi
An unsecure Wi-Fi network can be dangerous if your laptop has sensitive information on it. Many people are unaware of the ways hackers get into Wi-Fi networks and gain access to anything attached to that network. This is more common when people are accessing public Wi-Fi networks where the security is much more relaxed. The nature of public Wi-Fi networks is to allow many different people onto the same network, and this can be a great opportunity for hackers to gain many different people’s credentials. There are several ways to get around this or protect yourself from this, which we go into on the webinar. If you are interested in learning more about this, then request the webinar recording here.
Ensure your Anti-Virus Software is running
Anti-virus software is standard with company hardware but if you are working from a personal laptop you may want to double check that your device is secure by adding some sort of anti-virus software to it. Anti-virus software is critical in maintaining your device’s health and your client’s sensitive information. If you have any information about billing, or accounting, or even just user login info, then you NEED to be using an anti-virus software. Again, for more information about this and details on the importance of anti0virus software, check out our webinar here.
Proper Authentication Set-up – Passwords
Picking the right password is an important step in setting up a secure working environment. Here is a quick list of Do’s and Don’ts when creating your password:
One other very important thing to do is to set up multifactor authentication. This means that when you log into your device you will be prompted to enter a code that will be sent to another account you own. This can be an email address, a phone, or many other things. This is a second attempt to verify your identify. Although this may seem unnecessary or even annoying at first, the level of security it is adding to your accounts is massive. This means that if someone does get your password or credentials, they will also need access to a secondary device or app that will ultimately grant their access. While getting one password or login address is time consuming, getting two is very difficult.
Review Policies and Procedures
Finally, be sure you are always reviewing your company’s procedures and policies. In many cases companies put procedures in place to maintain the level of security their devices are expected to have. This can mean that you may be required to set up two factor authentication, or mandatory password resets based on a time period, or even just simply having anti-virus software on your device.
These simple measures can provide you and your clients with much more security. For more information on this and all the topics we spoke about above, please look at our short 30-minute webinar which you can find here.
