Four things everyone should do this month
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Skip the posters. These four habits stop most attacks on people.
It’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and you’ll see a lot of posters. This year CISA keeps it to four basics. They’re the right four.
- Turn on MFA for email first, then banking, social media and work accounts. An app or security key is better than SMS, and SMS is better than nothing.
- Use a password manager. Long, unique passwords, generated for you. You remember one.
- Turn on automatic updates for your phone, laptop, browser and apps. Most attacks use holes that already have a fix.
- Learn to spot and report phishing. Urgency, a request for a login or payment, a sender that’s slightly off. When in doubt, check through another channel.
If you manage a team, don’t send another quiz. Spend the month making these four easy: buy the password manager, switch on MFA for everyone, and give people one button to report a suspicious email.
Then thank the first person who uses it.