Everyone is understandably nervous about their cyber security. Multiple breaches have caused many people to panic and race to find the best security. While it’s impossible to protect against all risk, the following tips here can help mitigate the risk.
- Dual Factor Authentication: Using this process forces you to put in a code sent to another device to access your accounts. These can be as simple as your phone number or your email address. The recent Reddit hack revealed that phones are not always the best solution to protect your data so have different ways to authenticate a log in.
- Never Open Unknown Emails: Emails are the easiest ways for hackers to access your company’s files. An account manager opened an email from what she thought was a client. Within five minutes, fourteen hundred files were compromised. Although this case is small, many other companies have fallen for this scam.
- Frequently Changing Your Passwords: Changing your passwords on a regular basis will make it harder for hackers to simply social engineer their way through your accounts. It is recommended to change your passwords between 30 and 180 days.
- Always Confirm Transactions That Involve Money: Millions of dollars have been lost because someone was duped into sending money to people they thought were their bosses. A worker once sent 212 W-2 forms after receiving a message from whom they thought was the CEO requesting them. The fallout meant those who had already filed couldn’t file it electronically for 5 years.
While these can mitigate the risk, it does no good if the hackers are already in your system. A properly structured cyber policy will cover damages resulting from the recovery, including forensic accountants, breach coaches and informing your clients.