N
ational Cybersecurity Awareness Month in October is an excellent reminder to maintain and protect your hardware and software.

Serious threats to personal data are at an all-time high. Everyone, including individuals and businesses of all sizes, needs to remain diligent in protecting themselves from hackers and privacy breaches. Scammers of all sorts bombard us through pop-ups, viruses, e-mails, phone calls, and even the businesses we visit every day. Take steps to protect yourself.

We asked our Ethical Hacking and Systems Defense Intern, Connor Ferguson, for a few short tips on how to keep our phone, computers and any other electronic devices safe from hackers.

• Check regularly if your information has been in data breaches.
• Use 2 Factor Authentication whenever possible.
• Use different passwords for every site.
• Use complex, random passwords (many characters, many types of characters, no words that have meaning to you specifically such as pet names, no words that can be found in the dictionary).
• Check to ensure every site you go to has a little padlock by it in the browser; if it does not, the data you send including usernames and passwords can be seen by anyone
• Do not click on links from or download files from a suspicious source (email, website, etc.)
• UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE; whenever there is an update button for your phone, google chrome, or computer, click that update button. Some of those updates patch security flaws that have just been discovered.

To honor National Cybersecurity Awareness Month go ahead and change your passwords, get virus protection, watch your emails and pay attention to the sites you visit!

#NationalCybersecurityAwarenessMonth