This is Week 3 of National Cyber Security Awareness Month and the key messages this week are all about owning your online identity and being aware of various types of risks.
Here are some of the themes for Week 3:
- Safeguarding your devices. Before you purchase new devices, research how secure they are and what will be required to keep them secure moving forward.
- Keep your WiFi secure. This is especially timely as there are several news reports circulating yesterday and today about a wireless vulnerability called KRACK. In short, you need to keep you wireless devices and access points updated to protect against new threats that are discovered.
- Own your online presence. Have you noticed that you will often see online ads about things you have recently talked about or researched online? Do you understand how that happens? You want to.
- Delete when done. Don’t keep unused software or apps on your devices. If you don’t use it, get rid of it. If you don’t keep it up to date, you could be vulnerable.
- Usernames and passwords are not enough. Understand the ways you can secure your login beyond a simple username and password. This is critical to do.
- Beware of public WiFi networks. They are everywhere and they are easy to connect to, but are they safe? Not necessarily. Do you know what you can do to improve your safety when using a public WiFi network? You should.
- Devices are smart, you need to be smart as well. With smart devices come a wealth of capability and it’s important you take smart, practical steps to keep yourself secure. when using smart devices.
- Do you have the Internet of Things (IoT) in your home or workplace? Is it secure? If you have a WiFi connected anything, camera, thermostat, security system, these are all IoT devices and need to be kept up to date and secured from vulnerabilities. You can’t just install them and forget about them. You need a strategy for keeping them safe as well.
I’ll explore these topics throughout the week, so come back each day to see what’s new.