As the new year draws near Safe In Warwickshire has ‘3 Cyber Safety Resolutions’ to help you stay safe all year round.

New year, new passwords!

Old passwords that need updating or new passwords needed? Look no further. To create a strong password, simply choose three random words. Numbers, symbols and combinations of upper and lower case can be used if you feel you need to create a stronger password, or the account you are creating a password for requires more than just letters.

Don’t Use the following as passwords:

• Your username, actual name or business name.
• Family members’ or pets’ names.
• Your or family birthdays.
• Favourite football or F1 team or other words easy to work out with a little background knowledge.
• The word ‘password’.
• Numerical sequences.
• A single commonplace dictionary word, which could be cracked by common hacking programs.
• Use a different password for every website. If you have only one password, a criminal simply has to break it to gain access to everything

Advice for creating great passwords can be found on the Get Safe Online website: https://www.getsafeonline.org/protecting-yourself/passwords/

You can test the strength of a pass word on the website How Secure is My Password: https://howsecureismypassword.net/

 Updated phone, clothes, new tech? Why not update your software?

Internet security (antivirus/antispyware) software

It is vital to keep your internet security software up to date in order to provide the most complete protection. Thousands of new viruses are detected every day. Each has a set of characteristics or ‘signatures’ that enable internet security software manufacturers to detect them and produce suitable updates. Most internet security software automatically downloads these updates (sometimes referred to as ‘definitions’) on a regular basis, as long as you are online and have paid your annual subscription (for a paid-for product). This should ensure protection against even the latest virus threats.

Internet security software scans for viruses in a number of different ways:

• It scans incoming emails for attached viruses.
• It monitors files as they are opened or created to make sure they are not infected.
• It performs periodic scans of the files on your computer.

Some internet security software also scans USB connected devices (eg memory sticks, external hard drives, MP3 players).

For personal and home office use there are a number of choices that you can take to decide which internet security software to buy. Whichever you choose, make sure it is a reputable. Here are a few of the best-known suppliers, but please note we are not recommending one over the others:

Norton, Kaspersky, McAfee, Bullguard, Sophos, AVG, Avast, Bitdefender

Christmas gifts kept safe? Keep your data backed up and safe aswell

Backups make it simple for you to protect your data by copying and storing it somewhere other than your computer hard drive. There are two principal methods of backing up your data. To choose which to use, you need to consider ease of use, speed, price and your own lifestyle.

Portable Hard Drives

An external hard disk is a fast, efficient way of backing up all of your data. Models are available that either plug into your computer’s USB port, or connect via your wireless network. Most are so compact that they can easily be stored off-site.

Online Backup (Cloud Backup)

The use of online backup (also known as ‘cloud backup’) is increasingly popular owing to its added convenience, security and low cost. You may back up any data from one or two documents or photos to the entire contents of your computer, with virtually no limitation on storage space. Some providers supply limited storage free of charge, but generally the cost of backups increases proportionally to the amount of data involved.

There are many providers of online backup. These include internet service providers (ISPs), internet security software vendors and companies such as Apple with the iCloud – to specialists.

Don’t Forget
Complete the new 2016 Cyber Crime survey, so we can see the full scope of Cyber Crime in Warwickshire, and across West Mercia and the West Midlands – https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/RegionalCyber16