Some time ago, we wrote how millions of Instagram passwords were exposed because they had been stored in an unprotected text accessible to the company’s employees.
During the last week, there was some more troubling news regarding cybersecurity. Mashable, a popular news site, reported that a database containing user data such as email addresses, IP addresses, full names, locations, and more, has leaked. And cybersecurity experts at Cisco Talos have uncovered new Android spyware.
Cybersecurity professionals all across the globe have a busy time during the quarantine. There’s a significant increase in cyberattacks. And because a majority of the working population is doing that from home, home network security became paramount.
There are lots of tips on how to secure personal mobile devices (such as using a password manager for Android) and personal computers (AntiVirus and encryption software) if they are used for business operations. And we gathered some of the best advice in this article to help to protect valuable information.
Use encryption software
Encryption has become an absolute necessity for online privacy and safety. Data-leaks, like the ones mentioned above, frequently happen when confidential information is stored in plain text and can be accessed by anyone. Even if the server is locked behind a password, if it’s unencrypted, then a vulnerability can grant access to it and to unencrypted confidential information. Up-to-date encryption algorithms are nearly impossible to break significantly increasing online data safety.
When it comes to smartphone and home network security, Virtual Private Network is an effective solution. A VPN establishes an encrypted tunnel between a user’s device and one of its servers preventing any third party espionage from happening. A cybercriminal can infect a home network and try to extract valuable data from it, but if the data-flow is encrypted with a VPN, he or she will not be able to exploit it.
Improve password management
Weak and reused passwords have been a headache for cybersecurity professionals for a long time. Sadly, easily guessable passwords like “qwerty”, “password123”, and alike, are still used to secure online accounts. This gave way to a relatively new hacking method – credential stuffing – which has been gaining in popularity for several years in a row.
First of all, strong and unique passwords protect individual accounts from theft. Nobody wants their Netflix, Steam, or Facebook account stolen or compromised. However, when cybercriminals gain access to such accounts, they may instead try to use them to infect user devices with malware for future, more severe attacks.
And this may include spyware, which will capture any business data that is on an unprotected device. In other words, personal and work safety have converged during the quarantine.
Password managers are an easy and effective solution to this problem. They allow users to have long, complex, and unique passwords for every online account, rendering credential stuffing attacks useless. Furthermore, advanced password managers store them in an encrypted form with zero-knowledge architecture, which means that only the user has access to them, and nobody else. This significantly decreases the chance of a password data-leak.
Secure your router
The router is the gateway to the Internet. It processes requests, sends and receives data, and is the front gate to your home network. Router protection is of utmost importance. Routers are also protected with a password; however, most of them have manufacturer-issued passwords, which aren’t necessarily the best, and there were cases when router passwords were also exposed online.
Changing the router and Wi-Fi connection password to a personally preferred one should be one of the first things to do after setting up a home network. The second step should be increasing your network security by activating network encryption. You can follow these easy steps on how to activate encryption on a router level.
You can also set up a VPN directly on a router. Each router has an individual IP address which can be traced online and used to launch cyber attacks. A VPN allows changing the original IP address to an alternative one, applying additional protection to this crucial network segment. Furthermore, if a VPN is installed on a router, then all of the home traffic going through that router will benefit from additional encryption.
But before doing that, make sure that the router has enough computational power to process advanced encryption algorithms.
These steps are by no means extensive, but a solid start for enhanced home network security. And even the tiniest improvements can make a difference when cybercriminals are searching for easy targets to attack.