Easy Tips Checklist

It is safe to say that your data is not safe. It is also safe to say that the best way to protect yourself is to consider your data has been breached.

Giving ourselves a reality check about the state of our data is the only way to protect our data and fight the threat actors who want to abuse it.

So you may be asking what you should be doing about that reality. Below is a checklist of questions that you should ask right now:

• Have I frozen my credit from all 3 credit bureaus? (Ask Hexagon Center's MyCredit Specialist for help.)
• Do I understand and have I turned on multi-factor authentication or change password regularly?
• Do I know how to use authentication apps?
• Do I practice Zero Trust by always trusting no one?
• Do I have good cyber hygiene when I'm online?
• How do I keep tabs on my accounts?
• What is/are my Personal Identifier(s) and who should I share this with?
• Do I have a good password? How often should I change my password? How to remove the password feature?

When we take exogenous measures to protect our data, data breach won't matter to us anymore.

Making sure that (1) our credits are frozen and (2) closely monitoring our accounts while (3) legislators make mandates for institutions to enhance digital security will hopefully make us worry less about our data having been breached.

When the general public sentiment is more apathetic than ignorant about the reality of data breaches, those organizations that have been voilated will less likely pay the ransom that fuels this nefarious industry. One does not need to look at the data to know how lucrative it is.

Should we even talk about passwords?

Unfortunately, as long as users are forced to use passwords, we have to talk about passwords.

How long is your password? Be sure that your password is at least 19-character long. While the length of password is the most important aspect of a secure password, throwing in special characters will make it even more secure.
Use passwords like this: thisisaverysecurePa$$w0rd
Not passwords like this: Pa$$w0rd

Do you remember your passwords? It is definitely better that you remember your passwords than write it down or use ways to remember them that may be insecure. If you feel comfortable, take part of a long password and use variables in only a portion of it that only you understand.

Should you use a password manager? If you haven't realized it already, using a password manager, (which LastPass is) means that all cyber criminals need is just that one password to get into ALL your accounts stored in the password manager. While it may be a challenge to remember all your passwords, it really shouldn't be a challenge to decide if you should use a password manager.

Meanwhile, we can push institutions that that require us to use passwords to move away from that by asking them to offer passwordless sign in or multi-factor authentication. Similarly, legislators can make a law that requires everyone to use multi-factor authentication.

In the meantime, maybe it's time to learn what an authentication app is.

The above content is NOT an official statement of Hexagon Center.