If you’ve been hacked recently, you’re not alone. According to the latest Microsoft Digital Defense Report, 921 individuals find themselves hacked every second, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/21/why-microsofts-hack-data-means-you-may-need-new-login-passwords.html.
Here’s why you may be at risk:
- You’ve never been hacked, and so think it won’t happen. Except—the number of people hacked in 2022 is 74 percent higher than in the prior year. What this means?—your turn is coming.
- You have so many online accounts, requiring so many passwords, that you’ve given up creating separate passwords for each account.
- You use identical logins and passwords across many websites and apps.
Your action steps:
- Immediately change the passwords you use on accounts with information you want to protect.
- Use strong passwords or random generation. The National Centre for Cyber Security (NCSC) recommends using three random unconnected words, with at least twelve characters, including a mix of numbers, upper and lower-case letters, and special characters.
- Use multi-factor authentication as a second security step.
- Consider a password manager—enabling you to use one strong, long password, with your others stored in an encrypted format.
- Don’t let “I can’t remember them” stop you. My first of 65 articles in Solutions: 411: Workplace Answers; 911: Revelations for Workplace Challenges and Firefights, https://bit.ly/3FcApi9 details “Seven Strategies for Remembering Names, Information & Passwords”. None of these strategies are hard to learn; all of them work.
- Don’t ever share your passwords.
- If you’re tempted to keep key passwords on a list in your computer or in a file in a drawer, don’t—unless you trust every single person who has access to your drawer or computer, including all the maintenance and janitorial crew members, including the contractors who occasionally substitute when the regular crew call out sick. A gifted hacker can find that one file, and you’re toast.
(c) 2022 Lynne Curry
p.s. The pup in the sheets has two nicknames: trouble & mischief.
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Yes, use unique and strong passwords. I, of course, store my password information on slips of paper. LOL, but true. For me a test of an online feature’s desirability is, “Do I really want to have to create an account and a password?” And often enough, the answer is no. There are a number of thins that I just won’t do online. But this is not a solution for everyone–again, chuckling as i write.