22 Jul
2020 was a crazy year and, though 2021 feels like things are a bit more stable, with so many working from home there are more and more opportunities for people to have their data compromised. Here are some tips from the STASH® team to help you make sure you’re safe on the web.
Tip #1: Practice Proactive Awareness
A quick trip to https://haveibeenpwned.com/ will tell you whether or not your information has been compromised in a past data breach. With almost 10 billion accounts that have been “pwned,” it’s highly likely that either your current or previous login credentials are compromised.
It’s not just the rich and powerful who need to worry about a data breach; all of us have sensitive information that we need to keep safe. Often, cybercriminals look specifically for ordinary people to steal from because they know their information is usually less protected due to lack of data security. Creating a secure password will ensure that your online accounts don’t end up in a public data leak.
Forget about easy to remember passwords completely. If you can remember them, you are an easy hack. While most sites won’t even let you save the obvious ones (like 12345 or password) you should get into the mental habit of jettisoning even the idea of familiar passwords.
There are many resources that will generate and even store strong passwords, like LastPass, Nordpass and others. These are long and random strings of text that are unlikely to be guessed by an algorithm or an attacker. You can also store these in a separate and secure password manager for ease of use.
Tip #2: Get Creative – use a different password for every account!
Even though you instinctively know that ‘Yourdogsname123’ is a very poor password, many of you will take the risk because it’s fun and familiar to have a password you think of as ‘yours’. STOP.
If your social media accounts aren’t private, anybody can log onto Facebook and see that your dog’s name is Chip. If you happen to use that same password everywhere for the sake of convenience, you are in even more trouble.
If someone gains access to one of your accounts, they can quickly try the same login information across the board. Using a different password on every account ensures that, in the case of a data breach, you can work to protect your other accounts while recovering your lost information.
A smart data protection strategy keeps your passwords unique and stored in secure locations. Online or offline. Last, change them up once a quarter – with a password generator app, this becomes much less painful than it may seem.
Tip #3: Privacy is alive and well – protect yours.
You’d be surprised just how much information you reveal to the world via social media. Things like mother’s maiden name, best friends, and past employers all are potential answers to security questions. Some social media accounts even allow you to display your phone number and email address.
A skilled hacker can crack a “complex” password in as little as 2 hours, and that timetable decreases significantly with more information. Making your accounts private gives you more control over who can access your personal information, which is something you should care about in 2021 and beyond..
Tip #4: Avoid giving out your email address as much as possible.
Many people use throwaway emails to sign up for coupon codes, promotional updates, and discounts so that they don’t expose their personal email accounts.
Your email addresses and usernames are examples of personally identifiable information that should be protected. The first thing that someone needs to access your account are those usernames, so avoid submitting that information to untrustworthy sites.
Tip #5: Avoid keeping your sensitive data on big data platforms.
Over the past ten years, the track record of cloud-based data aggregates like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Adobe Cloud has been abysmal. The problem with these operating systems is that they are too big, too automated, and keep everyone’s files and folders in the same big ‘bin’ If someone gets in (this isn’t the first time for Dropbox)
Everyone’s stored files, including yours of course, are there for the taking. For instance, if someone gains access to your personal Gmail, they can automatically access all of the information in your Drive. Keeping your most sensitive data away from these larger platforms reduces the likelihood that your information will be a part of a more substantial data breach.
Tip #6: Keep your files private and secure with STASH®.
At STASH®, our primary goal is protecting what matters most: the data itself. The amount of information on our electronic devices combined with the time we spend looking at our screens, a breach is just waiting to happen.
There is a BIG difference between a secure cloud and security in the cloud. A secure cloud typically protects the pathways that carry your data in and out of that cloud – this is what most security tools do. Security in the cloud is what STASH® does instead. Rather than attempting to protect your data by protecting the pathways (this is called defensive security) , we focus on protecting your data at the data level.
That means even when attackers get access to your data inside the cloud, they don’t have access to all the pieces that STASH® has encrypted and keeps in multiple places. Attackers are foiled. They would have to find every piece, put them back together, and break the encryption of each piece before they could see your data.
The possibility of this happening is statistically almost impossible. Instead of trying to protect your documents, folders, pictures and videos by simply keeping them in an insecure cloud, secure them in any cloud, anywhere, by protecting them with STASH®.
