{"id":1349,"date":"2022-01-08T20:46:13","date_gmt":"2022-01-08T20:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/?p=1349"},"modified":"2022-01-08T20:52:46","modified_gmt":"2022-01-08T20:52:46","slug":"securing-your-digital-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/giving-back\/securing-your-digital-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Securing your Digital Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Author:<\/strong> Alex Von Duering<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Alex\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Hacking has become a common event in our lives and long gone are the days that the hacker is a lone-wolf attacking systems to find out if they can. Hacking is big business and is also being leveraged as a political tool of hostile foreign nations. There are several interesting statistics posted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology1 in 2020.<\/p>

  • 10% of small businesses that had a breach were forced to shut down.1<\/sup><\/li>
  • 88% of small business owners feel that their business is vulnerable to cyberattack1<\/sup><\/li>
  • Ransomware is the #1 threat to small business and the average ransomware payment has been going up. As of Feb 2020 the average ransom was $41,1981<\/sup><\/li>
  • It is forecasted that as of 2021, cybercrime will cost the world over $6 trillion1<\/sup><\/li><\/ul>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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    Trying to protect yourself in a world of such hostility can seem overwhelming and until recently many online institutions did not even offer basic means of protection beyond a simple password.\u00a0 What makes this even more intimidating is, through no fault of your own, your data may become compromised from a government agency breach to ubiquitous tech-giants who\u2019ve mastered collecting and harvesting all of the data they can.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t mean that ignoring these threats but instead, become aware they exist and protect yourself accordingly.<\/p>

    The first thing to consider is the password you use.\u00a0 That sentence alone should be cause for alarm as you should not just have one password that you use across all of your services and devices.\u00a0 If any one of those services become compromised and the attacker somehow gains access to one of your services then all of your services will be vulnerable and ripe.\u00a0 Since most people also use their email address as their username, it isn\u2019t a complex system to crack.\u00a0 Good passwords are long.\u00a0 The longer the better, if that password also employs complexity that will make it even harder to break.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    I can already hear the groaning!\u00a0 \u201cWhat do you mean!\u00a0 I already have more passwords than I can remember!\u201d\u00a0 The little secret is you don\u2019t have to remember them all!\u00a0 Using a password manager to keep your passwords in a central and secure location will bridge the gap and allow all of your services to each have their own unique, long, and complex password.\u00a0 There are many password managers out there, some with the ability to auto-populate web forms.\u00a0 Some of which are Roboform, Keepass, and LastPass, just to name a few.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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    The next line of defense for your online accounts is enabling a second type of barrier to being able to log into your service, in the form of Two-Factor (2FA) or Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), both of which can be used interchangeably.\u00a0 Many services have begun to force users to implement these and I\u2019m still surprised at how many online institutions don\u2019t have the means to enforce MFA.\u00a0 MFA is the mechanism that enforces your participation for the log in.\u00a0 For example, after entering your password, if the system sends you a text message with a code that you then have to enter to complete the login process.\u00a0 Texts can be intercepted and stolen so they are not the preferred method for MFA but they are absolutely better than nothing and in those situations where that is all that is offered, it should definitely be employed.\u00a0 Preferred MFA solutions would be using a dedicated hardware tokens like YubiKey or an App like Google or Microsoft Authenticators.\u00a0 Without becoming overly complex, Google Authenticator works in so many situations, it is my preferred solution when it is available otherwise MFA by text messages is a viable alternative.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    So, you have a good, strong, and unique password now and are using MFA solutions, you are out of the woods, right?\u00a0 Wrong!\u00a0 If you think like a hacker, there MUST be a way around all of these security mechanisms, right?\u00a0 Yes, there is.\u00a0 If you want to know the biggest vulnerability to your data, well, hole in your armor is you.\u00a0 Do you send important information in plain text emails?\u00a0 When was the last time you sent a password and username in an email or text message?\u00a0 Excluding the fact that the email could be intercepted in in transmission, your \u201cSent Items\u201d folder and email in general is a treasure trove of information about you.\u00a0 How you communicate, what you communicate, and what you have access to.\u00a0 When you need to recover account information (even when secured by a strong password and MFA), most systems recover account information via email verification.\u00a0 If your email account ever becomes exposed or accessed by a malicious entity, the attacker can slowly take over your accounts with you being none the wiser.\u00a0 Treating your email accounts is one of the most critical services you use is going to be essential to protecting yourself.\u00a0 Next time someone calls you out of the blue attempting to help you or you receive an email requesting information, ask yourself\u2026 \u201cHow can this be used against me?\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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    With the reliance our civilization has come to depend on digital communication, securing the means we communicate is paramount.\u00a0 Never getting any of your accounts hacked or otherwise compromised is a tall order in this age.\u00a0 We are constantly under assault and it doesn\u2019t matter if you are successful at repelling an attack 999 times out of 1000, it takes one oversight or failure on your part to be victimized, just once for massive amounts of damage to your business, finances or reputation to suffer.\u00a0 Even being under constant attack, doing everything you can to prevent it from happening in the first place is critical and if you do happened to become compromised, minimizing your attack surface or the damage that can be caused by that event is the best way to protect yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Author: Alex Von Duering Hacking has become a common event in our lives and long gone are the days that the hacker is a lone-wolf attacking systems to find out if they can. Hacking is big business and is also being leveraged as a political tool of hostile foreign nations. There are several interesting statistics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-giving-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1360,"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions\/1360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeplusstylemag.com\/stgeorge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}