The fall season is upon us, and the month of October is full of fall activities and, of course, Halloween. However, Halloween isn’t the only spooky part of October. This month is also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and having your technology device’s security breached is a very scary thing.
The world today is very reliant on technology and that can be a good thing, but also a very dangerous thing. Around 45% of adults today have their banking information and credit card information saved on their phones. Many young adults save their parents’ card information, as well as their own. Much of the population pay bills online and fill out security forms that require private information online.
Out of convenience, people save their passwords, have apps to unlock their front doors and many other things that can ultimately be hacked and used for harm. Although all these technological devices and apps make people’s lives much easier, it comes at a price if not protected properly.
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and the goal is to help educate the population on how to protect their devices and their information and be aware of the forms that security threats may come in.
Cybersecurity threats come in many shapes and sizes. Some of the basic ones are pretty simple to protect your devices from. There are security threats to try to attack through scam emails. The goals are to get the user to click on the link and, once that happens, there are many different things that can be accomplished by the hacker.
They can breach the security of your device when you click the link and get access to your saved information. The hackers can download malware onto your device to gain access to information and track the movements on the device to see the information being typed or viewed on the device. Sending sensitive information online is also a risk.
Hackers can perform what is called a man in the middle attack, where they can intercept private messages between the sender and the recipient and see the contents of the message. These are just a few of the many security attacks that can take place on your devices.
The best way to avoid these threats is to not click on any links or emails that you don’t recognize or look suspicious. One way to see if an email is suspicious is to check for grammatical errors and also look at the return email address.
Most of the time, scam emails will have a random assortment of letters and numbers in their return addresses. Also, most of the time, banks and credit card companies don’t communicate through email, so if the email seems like it is regarding that information, call your bank or card company and delete the email.
Some other preventative measures that can be taken are to protect the device you are using. Installing antivirus software can help protect your device against malware. Another good installation would be firewalls that will filter the traffic that may enter your device and would protect it. Making sure to keep your operating system up to date is another good tactic.
One way to protect your passwords would be to either not save them to your device or turn on multi factor authentication, which will decrease your chances of getting hacked.
These are just some of the ways you can protect your devices and your information. If you have any questions or want any help getting started protecting your device, feel free to stop by the TechZone on campus.
