Get yourself cybersecure for 2020
0Reported today on The Guardian Technology
For the full article visit: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/31/get-cybersecure-for-2020-cybersecurity-passwords-smartphone
Get yourself cybersecure for 2020
Get yourself cybersecure for 2020
With ever more tech in our lives, our data is vulnerable. Here are our six top tips to keep it safe in the new year
Technology is changing our lives for the better; yet it's also exposing us to organised crime, online scammers and hackers – and whole industries built around monetising our personal data. But you don't have to be resigned to cyber-victimhood. Give yourself, and your devices, a security update for 2020 and start fighting back.
Random and unique passwords
A study carried out by the Ponemon Institute found that 51% of individuals in the UK reuse an average of five passwords across different sites and services. "This makes your accounts far easier to hack," says Nic Sarginson, senior solutions engineer at security firm Yubico. "By gaining access to one account an attacker could quite easily crack another." It's the cyber-equivalent of having one key that unlocks your front door, your office, your car and the bank for good measure, and then keeping a spare under the doormat. "Every year billions of credentials such as email addresses, passwords and personal information are shared and traded online by cybercriminals," says Dr Richard Gold, director of security engineering at Digital Shadows. You can see if any of yours have been compromised already by going to haveibeenpwned.com. If you think coming up with a unique, long and random, complex password that you can remember for every account you use is impossible, you'd be right. Unless you use a password-manager app, such as LastPass or 1Password, which will not only generate the passwords for each site, but also store them securely and then automatically use the right ones when you need