STAY CYBER SAFE THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

The holiday season is fast approaching, and cybercriminals are ready. Are you? Every year around the holidays, bad actors increase their efforts. There is a documented 30% increase in ransomware attacks during this time. During the holidays, there is more advertising going on, more people are on vacation or distracted and most everyone is in a “holiday mood” aka not paying as much attention as they normally would. To better protect yourself, here are some tips to have a safe cyber holiday season.

• THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK! During the holiday season, legitimate companies up their marketing emails.

So do cybercriminals. And they are getting better at imitating legitimate emails and websites. Watch out for anything triggering fear, urgency or greed, as these are three of the major emotions attackers prey on. Ads and links on websites can also be malicious. The same rules apply to these as to emails.

• CHECK LINKS AND WEBSITES THOROUGHLY. Use Google or another search engine to find an unfamiliar website instead of clicking a link. Watch out for misspellings! Google.com is not the same as gooogle.com;

Amazon.com is not the same as anazon.com.

• RESIST THE URGE TO SEND OFF A ‘QUICK REPLY’. You should always vet your emails before sending a reply as this can reduce the risk of a reply leading to a phish.

• USE STRONG AND UNIQUE PASSWORDS. Use a different strong password for each website / company you interact with. Do not store your passwords (or your credit card info!) in your browser. Use a password manager instead.

• USE MULTI-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION. Wherever possible, enable multifactor authentication on the websites / companies you interact with. That way, if your password gets compromised, you have a second line of defense. In order, the strongest MFA solutions are: • Hardware Dongle and App Generated OTP Codes • App Authentication Prompts • SMS MFA • Email MFA

Speaking of MFA, don’t approve an authentication request in an app if you are not sure of its origin, or if you initiated it. There is a technique going around where bad actors will spam an MFA app until the user approves the access just to get the app to be quiet.

• DON’T USE FREE OR PUBLIC WI-FI. When working with personal or sensitive data never use free Wi-Fi. If you need to conduct transactions over an untrusted network, use a high-quality VPN. But in all reality, be on a trusted network when shopping or banking online.

• BEWARE OF “SHOULDER SURFING”. Someone watching over your shoulder while you are online.

• KEEP UP-TO-DATE. Enable the auto-update feature to update regularly and always run a reputable security suite.

• USE A CREDIT CARD. When shopping online, credit cards generally offer more fraud protection than debit cards more fraud protection then debit cards.