Protect Your Accounts from Hackers

Dear Readers,

Check out last Tuesday’s post Was My Data in the Data Breach.

We know a data breach is the unauthorized theft of personal information that has been collected for legitimate purposes. This information can include your full name, your email, your username, and even social security or credit card numbers. Worst of all once you submit this information to your job, or doctor, or that online shopping site you are no longer in control the safe keeping of your most personal information.

What happens after the breach?

Here is the rub, A hacker targets a small healthcare provider looking for vulnerabilities in their network security. Then they infiltrate their corporate network searching the servers for customer information data files they can download. This is the breach. In this breach could be your name, email, and username. Your information will be sold to another party (the more personal the data, the more valuable) that will attempt to either open fraudulent accounts as you or attempt to profit from attacking you directly.

What can you do:

Always use Multifactor Authentication:

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a security method for online accounts that requires multiple forms of verification before access is granted. This approach, which includes a combination of something you know (like a password) and something you have (like a phone for a text code), significantly reduces the likelihood of unauthorized access, even if one factor, such as a password, is compromised. MFA adds an extra layer of protection to ensure the user's identity and safeguard against potential hacks. All of your accounts should have multifactor authentication to make sure it is your logging in every time.

Always log out of your accounts:

• Regularly log out of all your online accounts to ensure security, even if you're not experiencing any issues. This helps prevent unauthorized access, especially if someone gains access to a device you use. Most platforms like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon allow you to check active sessions and log out remotely. This is critical because a perpetrator with access to your account does not always act immediately. They may maintain access, for example, in your email account waiting for you to make a major purchase and then strike. Numerous wire transfers have landed in the wrong bank account because of unauthorized email usage. Logging out of accounts guarantees that it is you and only you accessing the accounts when coupled with multifactor authentication.

Avoid repeating Sign-in credentials:

• If you are using the same username and password for all of your accounts this makes you easy prey. If anyone gets a hold of that information in a breach they can access your email, banking, and credit card accounts all the same. This is a tough one because we have an account for everything. The power company, the bank, the cable company, the router, the email, your nike account, amazon, we have more accounts than ever. Create a system or use a password manager.

What does it all mean?

You can not control what happens to your personal data after you give it away. However, you can control the security of your accounts and what can be done with that data. If you have my password and username you could not access my email. Why? Because my multifactor authentication requires me to insert an actual key into my computer to let my account know it’s me. This is a conversation for another day. You should be using the information here to make sure you are being proactive against data theft.

Stay informed,

The Help Desk

For further reading:

• What is Multifactor Authentication: 

  [Link to Article]

• Always log out of your accounts:

  [Link to Article]

• What hackers do with you information:

  [Link to Article]

Stay updated on the latest threats and security trends by subscribing to The Help Desk newsletter. https://www.thehelpdesk.news/subscribe