The digital age is upon us. Information Technology and Security two big technical
jargons to deal in. Especially when you are a cyber-security professional who
understands the importance of being secured in today’s world of viruses and threats.
A huge damage can be caused by someone in a remote city over the internet to your
families and friends personal data. Cybercriminals carefully exploit loopholes to steal
information and perform unauthorized transactions across devices and applications
that are not secured enough.
How important is your family and friends being secured?
Buying a smartphone, a laptop or an iPad can be the easiest task but being secure while
using these IT assets can be very tough. Very recently in a conversation with my family
about the growing ransomwares it was a personal thrill or a surprise for me to listen
and understand on the knowledge they have relating to information security
perspectives.
For my people I was always an officer trying to scare them of dos and don’ts when
browsing online or using social media or while trying to download any software.
Everyone treated me as an old professor who gives lectures on security in today’s
generation where the online environment is pretty dynamic.
In other words, I could never make them certainly realize on the importance of being
cyber secured to lead a healthy browsing life. So I decided to make them understand in
another way where they relate their daily life incidents with the security standpoints.
For sure I knew my family and friends understood about the viruses, bad or spam
emails, unrecognized attachments, junk content and many more. Important thing for me
was to make them understand on the effects of all these to their systems or their
personal data and how to stay away from them.
I introduced all my loving people to some of the good friends in IT Security in a
get together at home.
1. Robust Passwords: All my friends and family use their own passwords in their
daily life. A strong password is their first friend. Password that has more than 12
characters and is a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters with numbers
and symbols in it is healthy. Always use passwords which can be remembered
easily. Never use same passwords for different applications that u use in the daily
life. With this a new question that bothers my people is how to remember many
passwords?
2. Password Vaults: The second friend who can help my people in keeping the
passwords safe without remembering them is a vault. All our daily work home life
applications and system passwords, PIN numbers or security answers can be
stored here. A little cost to investment onto the password vaults can make our life
easy and simple.

3. 2 Factor Authentication: An initial safety while logging in your devices and
accessing any transactions is important. 2 or Multi factor authentication is your
third friend who will warn and safeguard you from different frauds. This means
you provide an information that you know which can be your passcode or you
provide information that you have or can receive like a code sent through text
message to the phone or something that you are like your fingerprints or the
facial scan. This will make sure more than once that the person accessing the
information is you and hence its safe.
4. Secure Home network: All my friends have their own wireless network at home.
When setting up the network a secure home network is your fourth friend. It is
important to ensure a very strong WPA-2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) password.
Regular updating of the WPA is important. If it works for your household, update
its settings to NOT broadcast its name the SSID. If not, use an SSID that does not
include your name or other distinguishing names and use a name that is
applicable to anyone in general.
5. Antivirus Software: A safe and secure antivirus software is the fifth friend. All
the computers used by my dear ones must have antivirus software’s which
detects, prevents, and removes malicious software on your computer. You can
install trusted antivirus software of any brand.
Cybersecurity does not have to be terrifying or inconvenient. Investigate the sender of
each piece of information sent to you to be secured.