“A really good thief who has all the tools at their disposal is going to get into your car,” said David Salisbury, a University of Dayton information systems professor. “You’re just trying to make yourself a less attractive target by putting in countermeasures.”
Here are internet-related seven countermeasures that will make yourself a less attractive target:
• Connect to the internet over secure-password protected networks.
• Create stronger passwords with letters, symbols and numbers and change them more often. Jeff Hughes, co-founder and president of Riverside-based Tenet3 recommends creating a password manager in a protected setting — on your smart phone, for example — to keep a list of unique and individual passwords.
• Require more authentication to log in and operate on computer systems.
• Encrypt data, including on a disk.
• Make sure all of the software patches and updates are installed. “Any software I’m using, I’d make sure my patches are up to date and I would run a full (anti-virus) scan fairly routinely,” Salisbury said.
• If you are unsure of a sender online, always enter a URL by hand instead of following links.
• Pay close attention to the privacy settings on your social media accounts and restrict who sees information.
RELATED CYBER NEWS
About the Author