National Cyber Security Awareness Month

National Cyber Security Awareness Month

October is National Cyber Security Awareness month and rapidly drawing to a close. It is this time of year you should review your security policies and implement new security procedures. While it’s always best to work with a professional, below is a list of things the average person can do to enhance their cyber security posture.

1. Call Guardian Solutions LLC today (719.330.8531) to conduct a security assessment and provide a written policy.
2. Change your old-weak passwords to stronger easier to remember passphrases. If you are using a password with less than 8 characters that doesn’t include an upper-case, lower-case, number, and special character, you should change it immediately. Passphrases are easier to remember and you can relate them to the account. For a bank account, MyBOM2016Rufus!@#. Let’s break it down, My -Bank Of America- the year I opened the account- my dogs name, random special characters. For your email the same passphrase schema could be applied. MyGMAIL2009Rufus!@#. (My- Gmail account, the year I opened the account- my dogs name- random special characters I utilize in my passphrase schema. )
3. Update your Computer Operating System, antivirus and firewalls. Enabling automatic updates is the easiest and quickest way to make sure your safe-ish from attack. Relying on antivirus isn’t enough as it is estimated ‘definition-based’ antivirus only catches 70% of malware.
4. Backup-backup-backup. The importance of regular backups cannot be stressed enough. Make sure your backups are running weekly and daily in the case of important data. Keeping all your backups on the same machine you are backing up is bad practice. If the hard drive goes, so goes your backups. It is important to have offsite backups. Backing up to the cloud has become increasingly more affordable and secure.
5. Run a secondary malware scan. When a user inadvertently downloads a malicious file - that user is telling the antivirus that the file is to be trusted and unless the file displays overtly ‘hackish’ behavior, the antivirus will do what it is told and ignore that file. Downloading a non-real-time scanner like Malwarebytes for PC, or Malwarebytes for Mac, or ClamAV for Linux is a good way to add another layer to your security.

Website owners have a whole other world of best practice items which improve the security of their website. If you have doubts about any of the following, call us today for a free consultation.

Is your

1. CMS is up to date and is updated real-time.
2. PHP version stable and up-to-date.
3. Server software up to date.
4. Website behind a firewall with comprehensive rules blocking China, Russia, North Korea, and other bad agents.
5. Scanned regularly for malware.
6. Created from the ground up with best-practices employed? Security should be number one in planning, not a bandage after an attack.

Call us today for your complimentary one hour consultation to discuss your security posture. You don’t know what you don’t know and that is where we, the professional come in.

Guardian Solutions LLC 719.330.8531