Best Practices for Protecting Your Personal Information Online

In a world where information is continually digitized, more opportunities arise for malicious attacks on personal information. For anyone that uses the internet to purchase goods, or manage finances such as mobile banking, cyber security is of utmost importance. What does it take to secure your identity online properly?

Let’s break down some measures you could take to sleep well at night knowing your information is not being used against you.

Protect sensitive information online
Whether it’s for work or personal matters, our devices are a great tool. The downside to these tools is they can hold our information and potentially be accessed by unwanted parties.

Here are a few tips on protecting the information on your devices:

• Always use passwords and lock screens for your smartphones and computers.
• Don’t store financial information, such as bank account numbers and login credentials on your phone.
• Always update devices with the latest release from your provider. These updates will contain security software to combat any new threats.
• Be mindful of downloads, files, and links sent to you by unknown parties. Never download or open a file sent to you by a stranger or from a questionable website.
• Resist the temptation to use public Wi-Fi, especially if you are working with sensitive information.
• Before you dispose of any devices always discard any personal information.
• Store documents on a password protected external storage device.

Use strong passwords

Although this may be obvious, having a strong and unique password will do wonders in protecting your information. Too often, we fall into the trap of creating an easy password for an online account.

• Use passwords with letters, numbers, and special characters. The longer the password, the stronger it is.
• Change passwords regularly.
• Never use the same password for multiple accounts. The same goes for usernames.

Recent data breaches have shown just how vulnerable we all are on the internet. If you follow a few principles when it comes to managing your digital information, you will increase your chances of not having a breach. Make sure to secure your devices that can connect to Wi-Fi, stay up to date on security software, and make unique passwords that you change regularly. We all have information that can be used against us, take the necessary steps to protect it.