Seven Simple Cyber Security Tips

CREATE STRONG PASSWORDS

Make your password at least 12 characters long, include numbers, symbols, and capital letters and avoid patterns like -123456. or ',qwerty,'. The most common password is 123456' and can be cracked in less than a second.

PRACTICE PASSWORD HYGIENE

Do not share your password.with any one. Change it on a regular 90 days basis and where possible, avoid using same security questions across multiple sites.


KEEP YOUR INBOX SAFE

Enable email scanning by your antivirus, don't trust attachments, disable automatic previewing. and never respond to email request for your personal or company information.

DON'T SHARE IMPORTANT INFO

Double-check the 'send to' field before sending emails to the wrong person, and if you are a repeat offender—or know of one in the business - deactivate auto-fill in Microsoft Office via File ->Options -> Mail -> Send Messages

KEEP SECURITY TOP OF MIND

Develop a simple plan for employees to follow if there is potential security risk identified. It's everyone's responsibility to share potential mistakes openly within the company. By doing so, you will shorten time between a breech and a fix. More importantly, you can proactive plan for problems.Organizations without security awareness programs report security incident costs to be 4x higher than their peers.

KEEP YOUR DEVICES SECURE

Apply encryption to PCs and USB drives and encourage employees to keep devices with then. Keep patches current by enabling 'Auto Update" across Microsoft Windows based devices and common 3rd.party addons such as Acrobat, Java, and Flash•—as these are common malware infection vectors. According to a recent survey, half of the respondents indicated that data on employee or contractor personal computers and removable storage is most at risk.

AUDIT WHO HAS ACCESS

Regular, evaluate responsibilities and access to sensitive data. If roles change, ensure only those employees that 'need to know' have access by adding credential reviews to your HR process and always verify 3rd.party access and security. Privilege abuse is cited as the most frequent form of insider misuse, so monitor and verify privileged use,