These days there are countless companies that will have access to your data to some extent or another, and that means that the likelihood of your personal data getting leaked is a lot higher than it might have ended up being previously. After all, each database is a potential entry point for a malicious hacker, so people should be educated on how they can protect themselves from data breaches as well as what they should end up doing if a breach ever occurs.
There were around 791,000 cyber crime complaints in 2020 alone according to a report released by the FBI. Many of these cybercrimes essentially just involved situations wherein someone or the other was tricked into sending someone money, but even if we were to discount these scams it’s pretty clear that data breaches are a pretty common occurrence with all things having been considered and taken into account. That makes it even more essential to have a game plan that you can follow that can mitigate some of the damage.
Two of the biggest examples of data breaches have to do with your email ID getting hacked or your bank account information getting stolen. The latter is obviously a great deal more concerning because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing the malicious actor to gain access to all of your finances and potentially stealing your money relatively easily. However, email hacks can be just as dangerous since many of your other accounts would be linked to your email in lots of ways.
If a hacker gains access to your email, they can select the Forgot Your Password option for any account linked to that email. They can then change your password and use that account as if it were their own, so the first step that you should take to reduce the amount of damage that can be caused is to enable two factor authentication. This is a process by which you would receive a code on your phone which would be essential for logging in, thereby preventing any malicious actors from gaining illicit access to your accounts.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the best time to take the necessary precautions is before an attack has occurred. Your account wouldn’t necessarily be breached if a company’s database is compromised, but chances are that your password might have been part of the breach. One thing that you can do is to use unique passwords for all of your various accounts instead of the same one.
The main advantage of this is that even if a malicious actor were to find out about one of your passwords, this would in no way enable them to access other accounts since none of them would be using the same password. You will only have to deal with a single account breach if you take this type of precautions rather than having to worry about multiple breaches having occurred all at the same time. There is still a lot that would need to be done, but you would at the very least have a little less on your plate.
Using a password manager is also useful due to the reason that it can help you get a notification if any of your passwords were part of a data breach. Taking steps like this is essential because we are starting to live in an increasingly interconnected technological ecosystem and there are a lot of things that could end up going wrong without us being able to realize it. Being practical and cautious is the first step to keeping yourself safe in an online or digital space. Take a look at below infographic from SecurityHQ for more tips on how to protect your digital information.
Read next: 2021 Saw Record Breaking Number of Double Extortion Ransomware Attacks
There were around 791,000 cyber crime complaints in 2020 alone according to a report released by the FBI. Many of these cybercrimes essentially just involved situations wherein someone or the other was tricked into sending someone money, but even if we were to discount these scams it’s pretty clear that data breaches are a pretty common occurrence with all things having been considered and taken into account. That makes it even more essential to have a game plan that you can follow that can mitigate some of the damage.
Two of the biggest examples of data breaches have to do with your email ID getting hacked or your bank account information getting stolen. The latter is obviously a great deal more concerning because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing the malicious actor to gain access to all of your finances and potentially stealing your money relatively easily. However, email hacks can be just as dangerous since many of your other accounts would be linked to your email in lots of ways.
If a hacker gains access to your email, they can select the Forgot Your Password option for any account linked to that email. They can then change your password and use that account as if it were their own, so the first step that you should take to reduce the amount of damage that can be caused is to enable two factor authentication. This is a process by which you would receive a code on your phone which would be essential for logging in, thereby preventing any malicious actors from gaining illicit access to your accounts.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the best time to take the necessary precautions is before an attack has occurred. Your account wouldn’t necessarily be breached if a company’s database is compromised, but chances are that your password might have been part of the breach. One thing that you can do is to use unique passwords for all of your various accounts instead of the same one.
The main advantage of this is that even if a malicious actor were to find out about one of your passwords, this would in no way enable them to access other accounts since none of them would be using the same password. You will only have to deal with a single account breach if you take this type of precautions rather than having to worry about multiple breaches having occurred all at the same time. There is still a lot that would need to be done, but you would at the very least have a little less on your plate.
Using a password manager is also useful due to the reason that it can help you get a notification if any of your passwords were part of a data breach. Taking steps like this is essential because we are starting to live in an increasingly interconnected technological ecosystem and there are a lot of things that could end up going wrong without us being able to realize it. Being practical and cautious is the first step to keeping yourself safe in an online or digital space. Take a look at below infographic from SecurityHQ for more tips on how to protect your digital information.
Read next: 2021 Saw Record Breaking Number of Double Extortion Ransomware Attacks