Cybersecurity Awareness Month
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Hover your mouse over the doors to reveal helpful cybersecurity tips from our IT techs!
Nevada's Tech Tip
For personal devices – one piece of advice I would give is to NOT publicly announce on social media when you are away from your home. For example, don't post a status about your upcoming vacation with exact dates. Post updates after the excursion to avoid the wrong people knowing you will be away.
Aaron's Tech Tip
An important step in keeping safe online is when going online to websites like LinkedIn , Facebook , YouTube , and other websites is checking the site settings near the search bar to ensure that the connection is Private and secure. To find this information out simply click the box to the left of the website you are visiting to see this information such as “Connection is Secure” .
Then last but not least is When signing up / signing in to things I also create a unique password for this website. Because using the same password is always dangerous since this is information lost inside of Data breaches. I know we all hate rembering passwords but that why google chrome / edge and others have built in password vaults.
Aaron's Tech Tip
One thing I do on my personal devices that is simple and makes browsing the internet much easier and safer is downloading an Adblocker Extension. One of my favorite adblockers can be found on GetAdBlock.com. Ad blockers are great for loading pages faster and protecting you from dangerous website links. The best thing is that you no longer have to see those ads.
Nevada's Tech Tip
One thing that I think would be good to bring up is the importance of a digital footprint. We need to be diligent and conscious of what we post because once it is out there, there is no way to permanently delete it. Keeping all social media accounts private so that only followers you approve can see your content is a good way to keep your footprint “clean.” You do not want future employers searching for your name and not choosing you based on what they find regarding your social media accounts.
Aaron's Tech Tip
What do you have on your phone? Your Bank information, your social security number, your pictures, your notes, and a lot more. All this needs to lead you into thinking about how to keep your phone , your computer and anything else connected to the internet secure from people wanting to steal your information. I’m am sure we all have experienced is companies selling your information or being breached and then you start getting strange emails and text. One thing I do to combat this is when signing up for something I put my email address as follows “[email protected]” for example “[email protected]” and this helps us know where information was sold at when receiving a bunch of Junk emails so that you can contact the company and in aiding in getting off information list or blocking anything sent to this email address.
Aaron's Tech Tip
I love to implement strong passwords on my personal devices. I was always told it's a great password if you can't remember it. I know it can be annoying to have to look for a password all the time. This is why you should use password vaults like "Keeper" to store the passwords and to type them more easily with autofill features.
Nevada's Tech Tip:
I would encourage everyone to look into a password vault. This enables you to create unique, complex passwords to keep all of your accounts safe. Also, configuring MFA (multifactor authentication) on all of your accounts that support it is another layer of protection in case a password is breached.
Nevada's Tech Tip
Something I’ve noticed since working in this field is how elaborate scammers are getting. A specific example is a “Microsoft” pop-up that launches in full screen, using audio to make it seem as though the computer is compromised along with a fake number attached. These attackers tend to get a lot of people with these because once they call that number, the person on the other end knows exactly what to say and easily can trick someone who is lacking in cyber security knowledge. It is important to reach out to your IT provider or MSP before calling a random support number. Better to be safe than sorry.
Doug's Tech Tip
The most valuable training internet users should know is how to use the URL bar on their browser. 90% of users use a Google search engine to find the site they are looking for. For example, users will search for something like Disney in a Google search instead of typing Disney.com into the URL in the bar. This is how users get redirected to fake sites.
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