5 Steps To Prevent Cybercrime

You may believe that cybercrime only happens to large corporations or big businesses. However, Scott Augenbaum, retired FBI special supervisory agent, found that there are four commonalities of instances with victims. To help keep yourself off the victim list, here are five simple steps to help prevent cybercrime in your personal life and your business.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/smiling-formal-male-with-laptop-chatting-via-phone-3760263/

5 STEPS TO PREVENT CYBERCRIME

1. STOP USING THE SAME PASSWORD FOR EVERYTHING

   If you do nothing else, stop using the same password for everything, or for more than one thing. Using the same password for different accounts just hands over your password to the bad guys. Fact: Compromised credentials are used in more than 40% of data breaches. Almost all of those credentials came from other hacks where the criminals pulled down huge lists of usernames, usually email addresses, and passwords. If you use the same password for LinkedIn and your business email, and Mr. and Mrs. Criminal got a copy of the LinkedIn user database (and this has happened multiple times)… now they have access to your email. Yes, it’s that simple. Read this article from LastPass for more details on the risks: https://blog.lastpass.com/2021/09/breaking-the-cycle-of-password-reuse/

2. ENABLE MULTI-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION (MFA) ON AS MANY ACCOUNTS AS POSSIBLE

   Enable MFA on as many accounts as possible, especially your business email account. According to Microsoft, 99.9% of BEC, Business Email Compromise instances would have been prevented if MFA was in use. The majority of cases we have been involved with didn’t have MFA enabled. It’s such a simple precaution and acts as a safety net for your passwords that do leak out.

3. LEARN TO RECOGNIZE PHISHING AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING SCAMS

   Educating yourself and your business on these most common threats will really decrease the risk of falling victim to a phishing email. All data breach events were the result of one of two things: (A) Someone did something they should not have done, such as clicking that link in the phishing email, or using the same password multiple places, or (B) Someone didn’t do something they should have, such as updating software to close a vulnerability.

4. USE A PASSWORD MANAGER

   Supporting bullet point #1, use a password manager to handle all of your good, secure, unique passwords.

5. GET CYBER INSURANCE FOR YOUR BUSINESS

   Get an appropriate Cyber Insurance policy for your business. Every business should have coverage because you never know what can happen.

WILL THESE TIPS WORK?

I will guarantee you this: If you take this advice and diligently follow these 5 strategies, you will greatly reduce your risks of falling victim to all manner of cybercrime in your business or personal lives.

IS THIS ALL I NEED TO DO TO PROTECT MYSELF OR MY BUSINESS?

No. But without these foundational security strategies in place, spending all manner of money on fancy cyber tools, BCP/DR services, Intrusion Detection Systems and all the fancy buzzwords in the cyber security space, won’t yield the results you expect.

 LEADING CAUSE OF CYBERCRIME

Every single breach that RealTime has been consulted on was the result of failings in these subjects. The highest leading cause of cybercrime was successful phishing attempts which provide criminals access to their business data and communications. The second leading cause was poor password hygiene, usually in the form of using the same passwords everywhere.

 What are four things victims of cybercrime have in common? Read now!