Cyber Hygiene Tips

Best cyber practices to implement, in order to protect your digital identity

Introduction

"Cyber Hygiene"

You may have lost count of the number of times that you have heard of this old proverb — “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away”. When pondering more about it, little do we realize that it is pretty applicable in the modern Cyber fueled world.

The industry has a common myth of being a cat and mouse game, between hackers and the good guys(there is much more to cyber).In today’s era, it is of paramount importance to maintain good cyber hygiene.

Tips to up your Cyber Safety game

1. Install a reputed antivirus across all devices — make sure to update it regularly to ensure real-time protection

2. A good strong password beats a weak one every day — Its minimum length should be 8 characters — with special characters and numbers included. Examples include - Bitwarden and Lastpass

3. Never reuse passwords across different sites — use a password generator for the same

4. Backups should be maintained mandatorily — Have an on-site and off-site solution. Use a hard drive, USB to keep backups at hand, and cloud storage. The rule of thumb is to have 3 backups - 1 offsite and 2 copies

5. Update your devices — these include installing drivers and software updates to mitigate security threats and risks

6. Use 2MFA or an authenticator app to supplement your authentication security. These are widely supported across sites.

7. Use a password manager to store your passwords, not your browser. They should have backup functionality and provide support across multiple devices.

8. Never neglect the importance of email filters. If you tend to receive phishy or spammy-looking mails, apply a filter to block emails. Identify keywords and blocklist them — to block other mails containing the same words

9. Not sure where a link takes you upon clicking on it? -use a URL Redirect scanner like Wheregoes to identify the destination of a link. Better safe than sorry

10. Delete old accounts that you no longer use. A major cause of PII leakage is the existence of such accounts, which are available for anyone to view on the Internet Keep yourselves safe and keep the internet baddies away. Bonus points for educating someone on these tips to maintain their digital cyber hygiene.

Conclusion

There are countless other best practices you can implement, to secure your digital identity,but as the time progresses, some become irrelevant. The challenge is to stay ahead of the curve,as new threats emerge

Thank you for reading this blog and stay tuned.

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