Guppuccino Ep6: Improve Your CyberHygiene
Give a thought to all your online presence – from emails to online banking profile to social media to storing official documents and personal photographs and much more. All these involve extremely sensitive personal data, shielded by password protection.
Which means that it is extremely vital for each one of us to stay up-to-date on the latest password security practices.
If you aren’t following best practices for password security and just one of your passwords is exposed or breached, this could potentially lead to cybersecurity turmoil.
In March of 2018, in the Magento case, almost 1,000 user accounts were compromised due to weak user account passwords. Examples of weak passwords that are still used include “123456,” “password,” and “qwerty.”
Part 2: (Guppuccino Ep6: Improve Your CyberHygiene)
“A lot of small business enterprises or SMBs have this false opinion that their business is too small or trivial to be targeted by hackers. The fact is that every business, large or small, are possible targets for hackers,” emphasizes cybersecurity expert Shubhada Bhave.
She further adds, “a 2018 study on the state of cybersecurity in small and medium-sized businesses revealed that 67% of the SMBs have encountered a cyberattack while another 58% have had a data breach in the previous 12 months.”
The fact is if your business has a digital presence, you are at risk and must adopt cybersecurity as a business strategy to guard both your stored data and website resources.
Are these cyberthreats confined to adults? Definitely not.
Today, young kids and school children have way too many digital privileges. Which also means that they are surrounded by online crime and malicious activities. They need to be more than an onlooker. They need to become cyber defenders.
As parents the ideal approach is to educate and empower your kids so that they learn how to keep themselves safe. But if you as a parent are fully educated, you can help steer them away from risk, so they can have fun while staying safe.
It is important to tell your kids about :
1. Strangers – Predators do lurk on sites that attract children, such as social media and online games. Theyw ill often pretend to be children and may also try to trick kids into charing their passwords or payment details.
2. Peers – Your child may experience bullying or harassment from kids they know. This can often happen on private chats in social media and through messaging apps. Sometimes other children may share private information about your child, which can cause great distress. If this data is sexual in nature, such as intimate pictures, this might constitute a criminal offense.
3. Self – Unsupervised children are themselves a risk online. They often click buttons or install software without understanding the consequences of their actions, They might also publicly post private information.
Sit down with your kid and agree on a few foundational rules about their internet usage. For smaller kids, you will want to keep these rules simple and easy to follow. For instance, the rules might be:
1. I wont go online without permission from an adult
2. Only 30 minutes of screen time per day
3. I am only allowed to certain apps (list them down)
4. If I want to install a game, I will seek permission
You can write these rules down somewhere and have a refresher session every now and then.
Once your child gets older, they will probably want some additional freedom. You can expand the rules a little so that they include things like:
1. I will never give my real name and address online
2. I won’t authorize any in-app payment without permission
3. I will avoid low-quality apps
4. I won’t share any private information about myself or intimate pictures
5. If someone is trying to get me to do something, I don’t want to. I’ll speak to an adult
6. I won’t click an email link without checking
In our second part of the two-series conversation about cybersecurity, Shubhada Bhave also highlights the problems the usage of a Public Wi-Fi can have, the problems associated with bad email practices and what one should do if they feel they have been a victim of cyber attack.
Watch the full episode on our Youtube Channel.
You can also listen to the audio podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcast.
