T for Technology – Keeping Safe – Online

Every single one of us has an online presence in some form or another. From kids setting up their first cell phone or registering their first PlayStation to a Financial Director making sure there is enough money in the bank for salaries this month. And just like the real world the online one presents plenty of chances for being bullied, robbed, or conned by some clever “Get rich quick” scheme.

There is a lot we can do to keep ourselves safe but first we will have to understand what we are saving ourselves from. Cannot exactly summon The Batman if your emails are being spoofed. We need to look at dangers from virus infections and dangers caused by opportunistic – keyboard savvy thieves, trying to defraud us.

The most common type of cybercrime we will experience is forms of phishing. Phishing includes spoofing or faking email addresses also fake links to legitimate looking websites of real companies. So, it is a skelm try to solicit information from you while posing as your bank or internet service provider even your insurance company or medical aid. They come at you from all angles and the only real protection you have… yourself.

Most of these are attempts is only successful because of an uneducated or inexperienced user. We will all get hit at some stage in our lives by this type of attack. The key here is to be ahead of the thieves and have some insurance in place, also know what type of dangers lurk in the dark web. Familiarize yourself, staff and colleagues on current scams and phishing attempts doing the rounds to avoid anyone falling for the scam. This type of empowerment and regular training will keep you and your staff save online.

It is my experience that more than 90% of all virus activity comes through email. Think about it, it is easy to spread via email, the hit rate will be high because of unexperienced users (trying to open the proof of payment from a Saudi prince that is your half cousins uncle – allegidly), and finallly once infected there is a handy list of people that receive your emails daily to forward to. The perfect circle. Not only does email spread malware easily, it spreads the worst kinds, hidden in files and links.

The worst kind will be ransomware. All files are encrypted with an undecryptable cypher, there is no going back from there and the best advice is not to pay the ransom left by the hacker on a cheeky notepad file. The odds are that the two bitcoins you will have to pay wont bring back your files. If this virus infects the wrong computer or server it can bury a company. There is only one solution once this happened.

Backup. It cannot be stressed enough that a regular backup schedule or real time backup will be the most effective from any identifiable attack. Any ransomware or virus infection will be rendered useless if you can restore to a previous backup. Keep multiple copies on multiple devices and even in cloud storage if you have available subscription. Paid versions of OneDrive and Dropbox will auto sync files as they are change, giving you real-time backups. Make sure that there is a plan put together for this. It doesnt matter the size of the company or the industry. If you loose all the plans in a architecture firm it is just as devasting as the files kept for cases by a legal firm. It will sink the boat.

When it comes to virus activity, we need a few tools, other than common sense to detect and eradicate virus attempts. Malware will attempt to cause harm to you and your applications by corrupting, delete or encrypt files where spyware will attempt to steal information from you by means of keystrokes capturing or mail hacking. Lets look at a few must haves to save us from ourselves.

Anti-Virus. It is like wearing a sweater at the start of winter, it makes you uncomfortable and slower than usual – but it will stop you from getting a virus. See what I did there. It is a necessity, so much so that on the new versions of windows you cannot completely switch of windows defender or windows updates. Bill Gates is yelling at you from the stoep, to put on your sweater.

Not all anti virus versions are the same. To say you have Kaspersky or Eset doesnt mean much if it is not updated or you have disabled the features. Make sure that your usage environment is safe by applying the features required. It is not to only protect your computer but the entire office network. Also make sure that you have the internet security version of software to adequatly protected from anything the dark web has to throw at you.