Losing weight and getting rich(er) are always great goals, but for most of us, they’re difficult to achieve and ultimately leave us feeling let down at the end of the year. The team at ATB is here to help you make some personal tech resolutions that should be much easier to keep and have the potential to help you prevent a lot of headaches (or worse) in 2017.
Protect Your Passwords
This sounds easy enough (and it really is)…you just have to do it. Start by actually changing your passwords with some regularity. If you have accounts that have had the same password for years, you’re putting yourself at risk. And if you have multiple accounts that have used the exact same password for years, your risk is even greater. The reality is that many online accounts have been breached at some point in the past, and if you have one password for everything and you never change it, the hackers now have access to just about everything you touch online – from social media and email to bank accounts and more.
The best way to prevent bad actors from gaining access to your online identity is to change your passwords regularly, use strong passwords and use different passwords for different sites. And no, we don’t expect you to memorize dozens of strong passwords – that’s what password managers are for. Basically this password manager requires you to remember just one strong password and then it manages the rest. Recommended password managers include: LastPass, Dashlane, 1password, RoboForm and SplashID.
Backup Everything
Until you lose everything on your computer, this probably seems like just another expense and/or hassle. But trust us when we say that you don’t want to wait until it happens to wish you had a backup plan in place. There are a variety of options for relatively inexpensive backup storage, including external hard drives and cloud-based sites such as Dropbox, and best of all, you can setup all of these to automatically backup on a schedule so you (theoretically) don’t need to worry about it once you have the system in place. So give yourself the gift of peace of mind and make sure you have a backup plan in place before it’s too late!
Rethink What You Send Over Email
No matter how many times we suggest that people shouldn’t send sensitive or private information over email, it continues to happen. The reality is, but for some specific secure messaging platforms, email isn’t the most secure way to communicate. And if you are sharing information such as your social security number, banking information, credit card numbers or sensitive business information over email, you run the risk of being hacked and having your identity or your trade secrets stolen. You probably can’t totally prevent the possibility of your email being hacked, but you do have complete control over how much information any one person can get if a breach occurs.
Just by incorporating these three relatively simple things into your tech routine, you can rest easier knowing your personal information and data are safer than before. Contact the team at ATB to learn about additional things you can do to take a proactive role in your personal tech security in 2017.