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    Stuff
    Home » News » How to beef up your cybersecurity
    News

    How to beef up your cybersecurity

    Toby ShapshakBy Toby ShapshakMay 18, 20221 Comment3 Mins Read
    cybersecurity
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    Good cybersecurity is one of the things that everybody should know about and practise. These are the techniques you should adopt immediately, please.

    Stay safe, over

    Install security software on your computer and Android smartphone. Right now. I use Kaspersky, which offers a single or multiple-device licence. Make sure you run daily scans and always keep it updated.

    Update Windows, Android, iOS, or any apps as soon as software updates (often called patches) are available. Hackers use known exploits to crack people’s security, often with ransomware, which would not be possible if the patches were installed to close the vulnerability.

    What’s the ‘word?

    Never use the same password for more than one app or website. Ever.

    Stop trying to remember passwords and get a password manager. Apps like LastPass, 1Password, DashLane, and others create randomised passwords with capitals, symbols, and numbers and fill them in for you. I prefer LastPass ($36 a year for Premium, or $48 for a six-person family).


    WATCH: Eugene Kaspersky talks cybersecurity with Toby Shapshak – including how cybercriminal gangs even offer healthcare.


    Set up two-factor authentication (2FA). Don’t be put off by the phrase. Your password is the first ‘factor,’ the second is an SMS or code from an authenticator app. I recommend you use the latter, as SMSes can easily be intercepted with a SIM swap – which is one of the most common ways people commit internet banking fraud. Either of Microsoft or Google’s authenticator apps are great. LastPass also offers one.

    Make sure 2FA is set up on all your important accounts, please. Please. Email, social media, cloud services, and e-commerce sites must all require you to verify your identity. A password alone is no longer enough.

    Competent cybersecurity 

    Never use any unsecured public WiFi without a VPN. It’s a common cause that ‘baddies’ use WiFi services with no passwords (and therefore no encryption between your phone and the WiFi router) to ‘sniff’ your unsecured data. It’s very easy to steal your login details and passwords this way. Like all things Big Tech gives away for free, you ultimately get charged a lot more than you ever imagined. NordVPN is good, as is Kaspersky’s app. Cybersecurity doesn’t have to be hard.

    If it’s too good to be true, it isn’t true. Don’t be fooled by phishing. If you are suspicious, don’t click on a dodgy link or open a document from a sender you don’t know. Social media is now the most likely place you’ll be phished, or catfished for that matter. Any private or direct message with a link that starts with ‘look at what people are saying about you’ is likely to be malware. Unless you’re Jacob Zuma. Then it’s all true.

    cybersecurity Kaspersky Lastpass security
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    Toby Shapshak

      Toby Shapshak is editor-in-chief and publisher of Stuff, a Forbes contributor and a Financial Mail columnist. He has been writing about technology and the internet for 20 years and his TED Global talk on innovation in Africa has over 1,5-million views.He has written about Africa's tech and start-up ecosystem for Forbes, CNN and The Guardian in London. He was named in GQ's top 30 men in media and the Mail & Guardian newspaper's influential young South Africans. He has been featured in the New York Times. GQ said he "has become the most high-profile technology journalist in the country" while the M&G wrote: "Toby Shapshak is all things tech... he reigns supreme as the major talking head for everything and anything tech."

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      1 Comment

      1. Maggie on May 19, 2022 8:03 am

        Love this.

        Reply

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