CyberSecurity : Best Practices

After having issues ourselves, we decided to give out our practices regarding cybersecurity.

PREVENTION

Strong passwords & Multi-factor authentication

Your phone is a game changer for security, as it's (almost) impossible to get access to and most service providers have strong security systems in place.

Usually, if you use the same provider for your home network, they provide intrusion detection systems built-in, to tell if you had a breach or if there is suspicious activity.

Be careful about what links you click on and what attachments you open

Phishing is a big deal nowadays, and a lot of less tech inclined people, fall for scams that look real. I remember walking in a police station and, in the span of 5 minutes, hearing 3 people who had gotten scammed. It gets even more tricky when you use a lot of apps for your job.

Use a virtual environment

When performing a task that you know carries risk, we recommend running it in a safe virtual machine, which means that even if you do get infected with some kind of virus, it will have little-to-no impact on you directly.

Use a VPN

Networks are especially targeted by hackers as they can carry out even more information than one device, meaning they could get access to a lot more than just one device but the entire data going through this network.

The easiest way to set this up is to have a separate hard-disk with a virtual machine program, you can also go further and use cloud based virtual machines, but they might be slower depending on what you want to do.

Firewall & Anti-virus software

This sounds like a no-brainer, but built-in systems might not be enough. Some more state-of-the-art solutions could be a good idea, especially if you deal with sensitive information and take risks with your usage.

Back-ups

Make sure to regularly back up your data and remove sensitive files from physical machines, as they are more vulnerable than your hosted data.

Update regularly

Another one that sounds obvious, but software updates do patch known vulnerabilities and even though hackers are always one step ahead, it could still save you from more common problems.

RECOVERY

Even when it's too late, you can still do things to protect yourself... First step would be to hard format your disks, as that is where malware will hide itself within system / software files. Hard formatting enables you to erase even the smallest system reserved parts of your disks. You can use CCleaner for this type of operation.

Log out of all sessions, changes passwords and enable 2FA.