Cybersecurity Awareness Month

31 Daily Cybersecurity tips to stay Cyber-secure

The following tips are considered to be best practices to protect your family, business, employees and data. 

If you have questions about implementing these tips or existing protections, contact:

• Your Internet Service Provider
• Your cellphone vendor
• The manufacturers or vendors of your computers and software applications
• Institutions that manage your on-line accounts

1. Educate employees and family members on cybersecurity best practices and risky activities to avoid
2. Understand that anything you post on-line like photos, may be on-line forever
3. Realize that the person you're chatting with in social media may not be who they say they are
4. Always use strong passwords: Minimum 8 characters, mix of lower/upper case letters, numbers, and special characters (e.g. !, %, #)
5. Change your password regularly
6. Avoid using the same user name and password for multiple accounts and devices
7. Never provide your user name or passwords to anyone, even if they claim to be offering assistance
8. Whenever possible, enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) to access accounts and networks
9. Always be suspicious of emails that you: Didn't expect, from senders you're not familiar with, about subjects that aren't relevant to you, or purporting to be urgent and prompting you to act quickly
   
10. Never click on a link in an email or open an attachment unless you are positive the email and sender are trusted
11. Install anti-virus software on computers and cellphones
12. Be sure to  enable child security settings on computers, cellphones, gaming devices, etc. that children use: this include web browsers and search engines
13. Be aware of your privacy rights under the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA): link to CCPA
14. For home networks, check with your service provider for recommended set-up and configuration. Make sure at a minimum their is a firewall between your home network, especially for wireless access, and the Internet
15. Use VPN (virtual private networks) technology for secured communications over the Internet
16. For businesses, identify critical applications and assets and ensure these in secured environments
17. Use strong security technology like WPA2 to secure your wireless network (WLAN)
18. Regularly back-up important data
19. Encrypt important data
20. Keep software applications and devices like computers and cellphones up-to-date with vendor provided patches and updates
21. Do not loan your cellphone to anyone unless you explicitly trust them
22. Confirm with vendors (third parties) that supply computers, cellphones, software, etc. that they use cybersecurity guidelines to secure their products
23. Guard against having your physical devices like computers and cellphones from being stolen
24. Be conscious of your surroundings and who is near you, especially check to see if anyone may be looking over your shoulder or others trying to glimpse your private data
25. Always have a screen saver or sleep mode enabled to lockout your devices during periods of inactivity. Make sure a password is required to take the device out of sleep mode
26. Avoid saving credit card information on ecommerce sites
27. Sign-up for a credit monitoring / identity protection service
28. Place a freeze on your credit reporting. This is a free service from the credit reporting agencies and help prevent fraudulent credit accounts being created in your name.
29. Use blocking capabilities in your email and cellphones to block calls, emails, and texts from unwanted senders
30. Avoid sharing personal information on social media platforms because this information can be used in identity theft, stalking, and bullying.
31. Google yourself or business: Find out first-hand what the Internet knows about you