All about information security best practices

Whether you are dealing with work or personal information, you should always strive to use best practices to protect the information. The following are great tips to follow to help keep your information secure.

• Defend your computer
  Keep all software current (including your Web browser) with automatic updates. Software developers regularly release fixes to security flaws through software updates.
  
  
• Think before you share sensitive information
  Look for signs that a Web page is safe before you enter sensitive personal or business data. These signs would be web addresses with https (“s” for secure) and a closed padlock beside them. Never send sensitive info in response to an e-mail or other electronic message.
  
  
• Think before you click
  Pause before you open attachments or click links in e-mail or chat even if you know the sender; they could be an imposter. Confirm with the sender that the message is real by phone or visit the official Web site by typing the address yourself.
  
  
• Use strong passwords
  Lock your online accounts, computer, phone, and other devices with passwords of at least eight characters (longer is better), and include upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. Keep passwords and PINs secret. Don’t disclose them to coworkers or businesses.  Don’t use the same password everywhere.
  
  
• Protect yourself from e-mail scams
  Look out for alarmist messages, misspellings, and grammatical errors, deals that sound too good to be true, requests for sensitive info like account numbers, and email addresses that don’t match the sender's name.
  
  
• Protect your data on the go
  When you use public Wi-Fi, choose the most secure option, even if you must pay for it. It could include password protection and encryption. Confirm the exact spelling of the wireless network you’re connecting to. Beware of clever (slightly misspelled) fakes. Encrypt the data on your laptop (or USB flash drive) in case you lose it or it’s stolen. Guard your laptop, smartphone, and tablet as carefully as your wallet.
  
  
• Theft or loss of sensitive company or personal information
  If personally identifiable information or other sensitive company data has been compromised because of theft or loss of a laptop, smartphone, or other mobile device, or because of a breach of network security; report it immediately to information technology and security departments. Change all passwords used to log onto the device.  For smartphones, contact your service provider for help in remotely wiping the data from the device.  If sensitive personal credit information might have been compromised, you can connect with one of the three credit-reporting agencies to check, and possibly subscribe to a credit watch service.

• Experian – http://www.experian.com  
• TransUnion – http://www.transunion.com  
• Equifax – http://www.equifax.com  

But I want to know more!

If you want to educate yourself more fully concerning information security best practices, you can take a course in Hoonuit. Click on the link below and then log in with your Lesley credentials (your Lesley username without the @lesley.edu and your Lesley accounts password).

https://learnit.hoonuit.com/5586/learnit?cn=lesley