Cyber ​​Security Awareness Month: Safety Check Time

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month and is a good time to strengthen your online account.

Angela Lang / CNET

Cyber ​​Security Awareness Month! It’s one of many events in October, including Bat Thanksgiving Month and International Walk to School Month. We need this opportunity, albeit somewhat artificial, to make sure it’s cyber smart.

Being cyber smart means setting a secure and unique password for every online account, enabling two-factor authentication as much as possible, and doing our best to keep as much personal information private as possible. To do.

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Holidays are worth celebrating if Cybersecurity Awareness Month encourages you to revisit your cybersecurity. Guemmy Kim, Google’s Director of Account Security and Security, says that automatic password cracking, data breaches, and phishing schemes are becoming more sophisticated and faster.

“In reality, passwords alone are no longer effective in keeping users safe,” she said in an email interview. She added that two-factor authentication is mandatory.

Another important reason to check cyber safety: Many accounts are linked to each other. This was hit by a major outage that shut down Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp most of Monday. Some people use Facebook to log in to other apps and sites. If Facebook goes down, it can be difficult to get into them. Account links also have an impact on data privacy.

That is, you need to lock down these accounts and figure out what other information is associated with them. And ideally, set up logins for new apps and sites that aren’t associated with your social media network.

To commemorate Cybersecurity Awareness Month, here are some easy ways to keep your online account secure.

Use a strong password

Passwords must be long, random, and unique. Approximately 15 characters, protected from most password cracking software. For ease of remembering, you can use a passphrase that stitches together three irrelevant words, such as “Grandma football Cheeseburger” and “lamppost Paris Hotsauce.”

Avoid personal information that can be easily guessed. Your dog’s name, your first car model, or the college you graduated from may be important to you, but they are bad password material. Do not recycle your password or use it with multiple accounts. No matter how good you think it is. That way, you can limit fallout if one of your passwords is compromised.

If that all seems daunting, sign up for a password manager. Keep all your logins organized and secure. You can also use the password generator and manager built into your browser. Most browsers require you to sign in to get a complete list of stored passwords, but some browsers auto-populate individual passwords.

Some of the options in the browser have been clunky in the past, but they have improved. For example, you can now use Google’s Chrome browser to auto-fill passwords for apps on your iPhone. Chrome’s automatic password generation feature will soon work in iOS apps. Google says it’s similar to how Autofill with Google now works on Android devices.

Always use 2FA when possible

If your password is compromised, the second layer of protection can greatly help protect your account. Two-factor authentication (also known as 2FA, multi-factor authentication, or two-step verification) requires someone trying to access your account to enter a second form of ID before they can access it.

2FA works in a variety of ways. This could be a code generated by the app, a biometric such as a fingerprint or Face ID, or a physical security key to insert into the device. Yes, 2FA slows down the login process. However, if 2FA is available, it must be turned on.

Google announced earlier this year that it will begin auto-registering user accounts with 2FA. On Tuesday, it said it expects to add 150 million Google users to the 2FA rank by the end of the year. You’ll need an additional 2 million YouTube users to turn on 2FA within the same time frame.

To keep things simple, the company also has a security key built into its Android device. With this key built-in, users are more likely to use two-factor authentication because they don’t have to think too much about it, Kim says.

“Ultimately, we want to direct users to a place where authentication is seamless,” she said.

A word of warning: If possible, avoid 2FA systems that text code to your smartphone. why? SIM swapping. A cyber criminal calls a wireless provider to steal a phone number and switch the number to a new phone and SIM card. It happens, and if a criminal hijacks your phone number, they also receive that text message.

Avoid using social media as a universal login

Signing in using a Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google account that you’re already logged in to on your mobile or computer is very easy.

However, its convenience comes at a cost. As we saw earlier this week, if your sign-in service goes down like Facebook, you may need to find another way to connect to a non-Facebook account.

When it comes to security, it’s no exaggeration to say that Facebook and Google around the world are more secure than the little games and apps you’re trying to access, but they’re being hacked. The more accounts you associate with your Facebook or Google account, the more eggs you can put in your saying basket.

However, the main sacrifice comes in the form of privacy. When you log in to your app using the services of a giant company, large companies can see the data collected by the app and gain access to even more data. The app can then learn more about you by requesting access to your Facebook profile, friends list, contact information and more.

Facebook and other companies have some control over the data that your app can collect, but it’s up to you to monitor those requests and reject them if you think they aren’t justified.

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