When you use the internet, you are potentially opening yourself, and your business, to many different cyber criminals. If you suffer a cyber-attack, you could lose banking details and personal details such as addresses, emails could be hacked, your website might be compromised, and your reputation will severely suffer. Read this useful guide on how to protect yourself against cyber criminals, and keep yourself as safe as possible online.
- Update Your Software
The software on your computer or mobile device will need updating from time to time, and you will most likely have seen messages pop up asking you to agree to these updates, and requesting that your device is shut down in order to install them.
What did you do?
Many people ignore these updates because they mean they have to stop what they are doing and wait for the update to be done. However, it is vital that you allow any updates that are needed. The more up to date your equipment and software is, the harder it will be for anyone to hack into it.
- Install Security Measures
Updating your equipment and software is a good start, but you will also need to include additional security measures and hardware from sonicwallonline.co.uk to ensure that everything is even safer. These include antivirus hardware, firewalls, and virus capture programs.
When these are in place, any threats that do get through to your network can be more easily contained, and in an ideal world you will never even know that you were almost attacked.
- Change Your Passwords
Having the same password for more than six months is going to put you at risk of a cyber-attack – the more time you have the same password, the more likely it is that a hacker will be able to work out what it is. This is why you should change your password every three to six months to something completely different. When you change your passwords, they should ideally be a random string of letters, numbers, and special characters as this is the hardest thing to crack. You can then use a password management program so that you don’t have to remember them all.
Another important point to note is that you should never have the same password for everything. If it were to be hacked, nothing you log into would be safe. Make them all different and you will be much safer.
- Strengthen Your Wi-Fi Security
Your Wi-Fi network is extremely vulnerable to attack – if someone can get into it, they will have control over every aspect of your virtual life, whether that is business or personal. So it’s a good idea to have a strong encryption password and to use a virtual private network (VPN) so that no one can intercept your messages until they arrive at their intended destination.
Using a VPN means that you can use public Wi-Fi without any fear of attack too, so you can work from anywhere and still feel safe.