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Your personal accounts are important for your privacy. Hackers who break into your email, financial system, social media, gaming, or any other sensitive accounts can impersonate you to commit identity theft, financial crimes, or in rare cases, pin you for cybercrimes. They can also use your accounts to attack your contacts, like your colleagues, friends, or loved ones.
For example, in a man-in-the-middle attack, a hacker can manipulate the conversation between you and your family to convince them to send them money or share their credit card info in a made-up emergency. Likewise, they can use your identity to change the passwords to your financial accounts and drain your cryptocurrency accounts. In fact, people lose millions of dollars in crypto assets every year due to SIM-swapping attacks.
Here are some essential password hygiene tips you must follow to safeguard your accounts from malicious hacking elements:
1. Set sophisticated passwords
Hackers regularly use brute force attacks like dictionary attacks to break into accounts by utilizing digital tools to try many known passwords in a short time. The best way to stop these attacks is to set a long and complex password that carries letters, numbers, and alphabets. Such sophisticated passwords are less likely to be broken by a brute force attack.
2. Change your passwords
Credential stuffing is one of the most common cybersecurity attacks. Here, hackers use stolen passwords from one account on another account. You may not even know that someone stole your password. Many companies either don’t realize they suffered a cybersecurity breach or fail to warn their users. So, don’t set the same password for every account, and try to change your passwords periodically.
3. Use multi-factor authentication
Even complex passwords can get stolen. That’s why you need to back them up with a second authentication step. With multi-factor authentication (MFA), a hacker who triggers an account’s cybersecurity warnings will need to authenticate their identity in another way, in addition to the password. For extra security, you can buy an authenticator USB device where you can receive your MFA codes.
4. Set strong password reset answers
Apply the same thought and care to your secret questions as you do your password. The most robust password in the world can be bypassed if the secret answers to your password resetting protocols are easily guessable.
5. Utilize biometric security
Biometric security can be more protective than traditional password safety. For one, while you may forget your password, your biometric details are permanent. Examples of biometric security include facial, iris, voice, and fingerprint scans. Even if a thief steals your device and your password, it’s unlikely that they’ll also steal your unique physical features. Well, unless you’re enemies with James Bond.
6 . Try a password manager
Keeping tracking of complex login credentials across multiple platforms can be pretty stressful and challenging. You can always try a password manager to make it easier. A reputable password manager shall create and keep track of sophisticated and unique passwords for you. Just don’t lose track of the password to your password manager to avoid grief.
The weaker your password hygiene, the easier it is for a threat actor to break into your accounts. Follow the steps listed in this blog and more cybersecurity precautions in order to shield your data from those with bad intentions.
