Cybersecurity at Home

“The first sure symptom of a mind in health
Is rest of heart and pleasure felt at home.”
― Edward Young

Welcome to Cybersecurity Awareness Month in 2022! As some of you may already know, our government has established the month of October as Cybersecurity Awareness Month. For the next few weeks, I’ll be talking about different ways you can help keep information safe, both at Huntington University and at home.

The quote above may seem like it doesn’t have much to do with information security, but in fact it does. Your mind will not be at ease unless you are convinced that you are safe at home. This applies to your “digital” life also. The same bad guys who want to get into your work accounts would love to also get into your personal accounts because they know that any place they can worm their way in is an avenue to bigger and better things for them.

Blessedly, those same measures that you take at work or school work just as well at home! Here are a few things you can do to help keep safe everywhere you are online:

1. Don’t make any difference between the way you treat business information and personal information. Protect them both.Hackers use seemingly random details about you and the organization you work for to better craft future attacks or social engineering campaigns. While a particular piece of information might seem harmless, it might be incredibly damaging when put together with other information. Just be cautious. 
2. Guard your mobile devices.It’s hard to steal information from a device if you have it with you or have it in a secure location at all times. This is especially important when you travel.
3. I’ve mentioned this before, but “don’t take anything from a stranger.”If you find a USB flash drive laying in the parking lot, just throw it away. Don’t try to see what’s on it. Many cases exist of hackers “salting” parking lots in public places with cheap USB sticks that have malware on them. Remember your Mom saying, “Put that down! You don’t know where it’s been!”? It was good advice then; it’s still good advice!
4. Stay private when you are online.What do I mean by this? Don’t post anything online that you would not want the whole world to know or see.  One of the most valuable sources of data for scammers is your Facebook page. Most people have a wealth of information relating to their personal lives which makes guessing passwords, tracking movement, and a whole lot of other private things very easy to figure out.

Remember, your personal data is just as important as your work data … especially to you. Grace to you all.

— Bob