5 Steps Employees Can Take to Prevent Cyberattacks

Pro-level cybersecurity comes through practice and self-awareness. It requires you to scrutinize your online and offline work activities a bit more. Too little skepticism is a big problem. When a hacker sends you a phishing email from your credit card company, they count on you assuming it’s legitimate. You see the familiar logo, and so, you click the link. However, that’s a dangerous assumption to make. Throw everything you know out the window and start with fresh eyes and new habits.

Changing your work habits to be more cybersecure helps you and your employer. The $20,000 spent on a cyberattack could have gone to a raise for you and your coworkers, to increasing benefits, or to expanding the businesses. When you protect your employer’s data, you’re also safeguarding your job. Here are five things you can do today to improve cybersecurity at work.

Whether for work or social accounts, strong passwords keep your clients’ data safe from identity thieves and data hackers. You may feel that string of numbers you created from your old gym locker combination will protect your data as well as it did your smelly socks, but that’s hardly the case. You need a strong password that’s hard to guess, not a strong password that’s easy to smell, and that gym combo is a real stinker.

If you were asked to substitute the letter “S” with a number or symbol in your password, what would you choose? You probably guessed “$”, right? If not, you’re on your way to creating stronger passwords. However, the reality is that most users would choose “$”.

Strong passwords are unique, but most of us try and make them unique in the same ways. It’s a paradox that seems hard to overcome until you know a handy trick: Randomize your letter substitutions and capitalizations. Instead of “$” for “S”, choose “&” for “S”.

Passwords, unlike the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, should be as long as possible. But there is a caveat: Long passwords are harder for cyberthieves to guess — but they’re also harder to remember. At minimum, your passwords need to be eight characters long, but you can increase the character count by applying a common memory strategy: Turn long phrases into acronyms. Then turn those acronyms into passwords. Here are the steps:

Use these tips to create strong passwords, and you’ll make it exponentially harder for hackers to steal your identity or your employer’s data.

Look around your desk. How many Post-it Notes do you see? Now, of those, how many have account numbers, passwords, or other confidential data written on them? If it’s only one, that’s one too many. Your office may seem like the last place for a data breach to happen, but cyberthieves do their dastardly deeds in the physical world as well as online.

These tips to safeguard sensitive data apply whether you’re in the office, at home, or at the coffee shop, so make them a part of your overall cybersecurity routine and use Post-it notes for lunch appointments only.

Use both a physical and cloud-based drive for backups. If one drive is hacked, you’ll have the other available. Most backups to the cloud sync your data automatically and let you choose which folders to upload. Talk with your employer about which files need to be backed up and which can remain locally stored. Set up a regular maintenance schedule to review your backup plans.

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