October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, and CapLinked wants to take this chance to remind blog readers about online security threats and what can be done to avoid them. Below are several ways in which hackers attempt to acquire confidential information online:
- Identity Theft: Having one’s identity stolen can be very serious. Often, hackers will access multiple payment methods or secure accounts, even using them to contact people for while posing as the victim.
- Financial Fraud: This type of online scam can include auction fraud, overpayment fraud, and advance fee fraud. Fraud of this nature generally consists of an individual engaging in either a fake or legitimate transaction with the victim, and then charging them more money than expected.
- Spam: Spam is essentially unwanted email that may contain faulty links, viruses, or fraudulent information.
- Phishing: Phishing is when a hacker creates a site or a form that pulls the victims’ sensitive login information. Phishing sites are often made to look like real, legitimate sites.
- Data Breaches: Data breaches take place on a high-level, when hackers gain access to a compaby’s database of user information and then use that information to access secure data or online funds.
Here are a few ways to protect yourself from these online security threats:
-
- Make complicated passwords, and change them often. An illegitimately acquired password is only good to a hacker if it’s still the password.
- Stay vigilant. Make sure websites on which you enter secure information are the real thing by observing the URL. Don’t click links inside of suspicious emails — instead find the website itself on a search engine and bookmark the page for future use.
- Use Two-factor Authentication. More and more websites are offering two-factor authentication, and many large corporation are emphasizing the importance of using it whenever possible. Read: iCloud Added to Growing List of Two-Factor Authentication Adopters
- Check your sites. What kind of security credentials does your website have? Make sure they encrypt their data and store it on reputable service providers, such as Amazon Web Services.
CapLinked’s number one priority has always been security. CapLinked offers two factor Authentication and is SOC2 certified. To learn more about CapLinked and security, or to see how CapLinked can help your company’s workflow, contact our knowledgeable sales team today.
A special thank you to the knowledgeable folks at Singlehop for spreading the word about National Cyber Security Awareness Month.
