Learning from the Yahoo hack and how to protect yourself

Learning from the Yahoo hack and how to protect yourself

How and what can you do to protect yourself or your company from being hacked from malware or virus ?  Some of this are very simple steps that you can do on a daily basis.

Safe steps to protect yourself

Step 1 – Make sure the email you are receiving is from someone or company you know before you do anything.  Opening up an email can trigger an attempt by an outside party to install something on your system.

Step 2 – Make sure your workstations and servers have up to date virus and malware software installed.  Staying on top of updates is now necessary due to the daily virus creations that are being done.  You need to make sure that you have the best performing malware / virus software and our recommendation is Symantec – Norton Security software

Step 3 – Attachments can have malware – viruses inserted in them.  If you do not know the company or person that has sent you the attachment your best bet is delete the email.  Simply clicking on it may insert an application that will copy your personal information, credit card information or any other valuable piece of information.  One current scheme is to send invoices with a claimer that the person is about to be taken to court.  Usually this would scare folks into easily opening the attachment and then a hacker is let into the machine.

Step 4 – Beware of web sites that have current events or products that are declared free as well as pornographic web sites offering free movies and images.  These are the web sites that will insert a virus or malware that could steal your personal information.

Step 5 – downloading or installing free software from friends.  Just because you think you have gotten the deal of the century your machine may be taken over.  There is no such thing as a free lunch unless it is from your mother.

Step 6 – Password protect your router, set up a strong password on the wireless account as well.  A simple strong password will contain a mixture of letters, special symbols and numbers.  Something like your dog’s name can look like R88I&N*G%O will protect you a long way.  There are some stories that users have 1234 or PASSWORD which is a BAD idea.

Step 7 – Enforce the internal users to change their passwords at the very least 90 days.

Step 8 – Keep up with your backups daily or at least once a week.  Machines that are hacked can become useless or even RANSOM.  A Ransomed machine is something such as the FBI virus which placed a FBI warning and requested folks to purchase a $200.00 cash card to be given to the hacker.  You need to call a specialist or reinstall the operating system to overcome this.

Follow the company security guide lines on protecting yourself and your job.  If your company does not have any security guide lines then speak to your IT department to make it a formal request.  Even following these simple steps will go a long way in protecting you.