Cyber security… Always on guard!

Cybersecurity has become the fundamental requirement of today’s day to day activity just as one protects their homes, office desks, cell-phones, tablets and other sensitive material.

Be it personal information, confidential information, some of the below mentioned measures will help one prevent being scammed.

1. Email Attachments and links

• Many emails appear with the sender’s name being familiar, however verify the reply to address if it is genuine.
• Do not click on any links within the emails even if the email seems genuine. To verify the link you may right click on the link and copy the link and paste only in the address bar of your browser to check on the address if it is legitimate.
• Many a times we may receive emails with the subject line such as “Invoice no ***”. These are also sent to irrelevant departments who do not deal with such emails and the attachments within should not be opened or downloaded. If the department concerned does receive such emails, they should verify the sender’s email address and if they were expecting to receive such an email.

 

2. Information Request

• A lot of mobile scams going on especially with mobile money and SIM swap. Do not give any personal/confidential details through the phone or email or other messaging platforms to unknown recipients. Verify official mode of communication from the service providers before any details are given out IF required to do so.

Credit card/ Debit card details should never be handed out to anyone including the security code (CVV) for any sort of transaction. Do not save any card details on your browser when prompted to save for Auto-fill.

• Be it personal or work related, be sure to check your bank statement or mobile money statements

 

3. Securing your devices

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Apart from securing your workstations with antivirus, firewalls within the premises, one should also practice good password protection not only for your workstations but also your personal gadgets such as your cell-phones or tablets.
• Avoid using your date of birth, first and last name in your passwords.
  Use complex and long password patterns at least 8 characters long including capital letters, numbers and special characters within your password.
• Most email providers provide 2 factor authentications whereby you receive a code to your mobile device to further authenticate your password to your account.
• Do not save any password in your browser when prompted to save / remember passwords.
• Passwords are like your credit/ debit card PINs, do not disclose these to anyone.
• When leaving your workstation, phones unattended, make sure the screen is locked or set a timer for minimum one minute to lock it automatically.

 

4. Backing up data

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Look in to backing up critical and sensitive files in a secure location separate from where you are.
• Cloud backup solutions provide an easy way of retrieving critical data from virtually anywhere in the world. In an even of Ransomware attacks or file corruption, or physical storage damage, these back ups come in extremely handy for retrieval.
• For inexpensive solutions ideal for personal data, one may choose to back up these files onto an external/ portable hard drive, USB/ Flash drives.
• Regular schedules to verify your backed up data should be practiced to ensure that incremental data especially for database driven systems are tested.

 

5. Browsing habits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Practice safe browsing habits. Avoid opening sites that are unsecure, unethical or illegal. Many sites ask for personal details or to click on unsuspecting links which may lead to unwarranted background activity of gaining sensitive information from your workstations. Few examples of such sites are betting websites, FREE movies/videos sites and sites with many popup ads.

 

6. Paperless society

 

 

 

 

 

• Critical information should ideally be digitized in the form of scanning and storing in a secure server/storage location with password protection to access such information. This will benefit for easy access information such as bank statements, company information, etc. The risk of the physical copies being destroyed to due to many factors such as fire, sabotage is minimized.
• Avoid sharing of personal data in paper form and to strangers.
• Hard copies of any information that is not needed anymore should be disposed off by shredding and destroyed with good waste management practices.

 

7. Seek advice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• When in doubt of the type of emails you receive which contain attachments or links such as verify email address/ or prompting to click on a link to improve a task, seek immediate assistance from your administrator. Do not attempt to click on any links.
• Even if aware of such suspicious emails or messages, forward to your administrator so that awareness can be made by informing other users of such content.

 

Have a safe and secure day!

 

Written by

Darsheet Shah, IT Manager