5 Steps to Improve Your Online Security

As we adjust to to our new reality of online everything (working, shopping, schooling, etc), shady individuals are working overtime to target our devices and online identities and scam us out of our money. The increase usage of the Internet in our daily lives gives the bad guys even more opportunities to wreak havoc and unleash a torrent of malicious content, compromised web sites and socially engineered hacks designed to steal our information. And the pace is relentless! We’re constantly inundated with tons of alerts about the latest threats or exposures. That makes it easy to get tricked into clicking on something we shouldn’t. That begs the question: what can we do to avoid the current wave of scams and improve our online security?

Increasing your cyber vigilance doesn’t mean you need to be a computer expert or think like a hacker. There are some easy things you can do right now that can have a big impact. Here are five steps you can take to improve your online security today:

1. Keep you computer, tablet and smart phone software updated – Regular updates of computer and device software are critical to keeping you secure online. The updates fix known weakness and problems, keeping the bad guys out of your data. What’s more, it’s even easier to stay up-to-date since manufactures now offer the opportunity to absorb updates automatically. To keep it easy, set up the automatic update function for your devices to ensure your systems stay protected.
2. Use additional sign-on / log-in security (also called two-factor or multi-factor authentication) – A number of vendors offer this service (Google, Apple, Amazon, etc) and it’s worth using. User name and password access has been the norm for quite some time. But passwords are easy to hack, especially for motivated attackers. Don’t make yourself an easy target. Change passwords often but also signup for two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication uses an additional form of identification – usually a code sent to your smart phone – to verify access to your account. It’s easy to signup and start using and dramatically improves the security of your online accounts and data.
3. Check the sender of any unsolicited email messages – Be suspicious of anything that ends up in your inbox asking for information or for you to respond immediately. Get in the habit of checking the sender information of any email or text message. If you don’t recognize the sender, delete it. Always check the sender information by clicking on the “From” section of the email or text message. Look to make sure the address of the email sender matches the web address of the organization. If they don’t match, delete the message.
4. Look for impersonal greetings and/or poor grammar in every email – Trust me, the organizations that care about your business know who you are and how to address you. If you get a message with “Dear Sir or Ma’am” or something generic like that, delete the message. Also, if the message body is full of misspellings and grammatical errors, that’s a dead giveaway. Delete the message right away.
5. Protect your computers with additional security – Let’s face it, we’re conducting more transactions online which means we also provide more opportunities for the bad guys. Make it hard for them by getting additional security protections on your computers and online devices. Popular security software from companies like McAfee, Norton, and Bitdefender provide that added peace of mind and let you surf worry-free. What’s more, these products cover both Macs and PCs to get everyone protected regardless of which platform they’re on.

We really live in interesting times! Now more than ever we need to stay vigilant as more of our lives are conducted online. Let’s do our part to ensure our online experiences are safe and secure so we don’t fall prey to any of these online scams. Be healthy, be safe and be secure.