7 Pillars of Simple Cybersecurity.

or ‘What you wished you’d done before your security breach’.

Photo by Jeff Nissen on Unsplash

We’re facing a problem, a huge problem.

Small businesses are suffering from cyber attacks all the time. In fact, a company’s breached every 19 seconds.

Most companies never bounce back. 6 months after their security failure they go bust. The cost of system recovery, the loss of customer trust, the data protection fines… Game Over.

Things are worse since the start of the pandemic. With new ways of working and new systems to get our heads around, we’re relying on technology more than ever. It’s easy to drop the ball.

Good security isn’t so hard to practise. You just need a solid Foundation to your Cyber Security. Think of it like locking the doors and windows before you leave home, it should be second nature.

How can we prevent cyber attacks?

Good habits, that’s how.

1. Please, please, please, use complex passwords!!!

How do I make a strong password? Make them at least 12 characters long. A random mix of uppercase & lowercase characters is a good start.

Chuck some numbers in and a few special characters and you’re golden. Attackers use brute-force and dictionary attacks to try to guess your passwords. Make it hard for them.

It’s downright frustrating that I still have to say this: DON’T REUSE YOUR PASSWORDS!!!

Look. Attackers breach a service you use. Passwords linked to your email and username end up shared to the deepest, darkest places on the web. (It happens a lot… re-read the start of the article.)

The attackers then use this to attempt a take over of all your other accounts. If all the passwords are different, you have nothing to worry about.

But Paul, how can I remember all my unique and complex passwords? Use a password manager.

Use inbuilt managers like Apple’s Keychain. You can also use third-party managers such as 1password or LastPass (in no way affiliated).

Set one ultra-super-strong password and let the manager take care of the rest. Generating, remembering, and auto-filling your logins when you need them. This also protects against keystroke loggers.

2. 2-factor authentication.

Turn on 2-factor everywhere you can. End of. Use apps like Google Authenticator or Authy to help you out in that department. 1password even has a 2FA feature inbuilt (again, no affiliations).

3. Update, Update, Update.

If you don’t update, you’re asking for it. A myriad of security patches are contained in updates. They fix major bugs uncovered up until that point. Automatic updates make this so easy and painless, so do it. This goes for all the software on your machine. Especially your operating system and web-browser.

4. Anti-Virus & Firewalls.

Keep the basics in mind. Make sure, at the very least you have Windows Defender or OSX Firewall enabled. Most operating systems have inbuilt firewalls and anti-virus, so while you’re there check that box… oh, and use full disk encryption in case your laptop gets lost or stolen!

5. The Free Wifi Trap

Don’t access critical secret stuff (read bank and email) using public or free wifi. Use your mobile hotspot and make sure it has a strong password.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

6. Don’t get phished.

Don’t click random links that land in your inbox.

Most companies will never send you a link to log in if they need some action on your part. If you feel compelled that you have actually won a lifetime Netflix subscription. Manually browse there and check it out. It’s trivial to make links, website, and login forms look legit. Malicious code hidden behind pages does all sorts of nasty stuff.

Take a sec, always think twice, and don’t fall for it.

7. Backup

Use regular, automatic backups stored someplace other than your working hard-drive. Cloud is great for this. Then if a virus you landed is asking for BitCoin in exchange for unlocking your machine. You roll-back to before it happened and learn from your almost costly mistake. Easy.

I hope there’s something for you to take away here.

Got some questions or need some advice? Call us for a quick chat… We’d love to come over for a coffee, but that’s hard to do right now. Give us a call, or drop us an email. We’d be more than happy to spend some more time talking with you about the best way you can prevent cyber attacks.