{"id":15082,"date":"2019-01-21T04:08:32","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T04:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=15082"},"modified":"2019-01-22T10:10:55","modified_gmt":"2019-01-22T10:10:55","slug":"data-breaches-are-inevitable-heres-how-to-protect-yourself-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/data-breaches-are-inevitable-heres-how-to-protect-yourself-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"Data breaches are inevitable \u2013 here’s how to protect yourself anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"

W. David Salisbury<\/a>, University of Dayton<\/a><\/em> and Rusty Baldwin<\/a>, University of Dayton<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to give up on data security altogether, with all the billions of pieces of personal data \u2013 Social Security numbers<\/a>, credit cards, home addresses, phone numbers, passwords and much more<\/a> \u2013 breached<\/a> and stolen in recent years<\/a>. But that\u2019s not realistic \u2013 nor is the idea of going offline entirely. In any case, huge data-collection corporations<\/a> vacuum up data about almost every American without their knowledge.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

As cybersecurity<\/a> researchers<\/a>, we offer good news to brighten this bleak picture. There are some simple ways to protect your personal data that can still be effective, though they involve changing how you think about your own information security.<\/p>\n

The main thing is to assume that you are a target. Though most individual people aren\u2019t specifically being watched, software that mines massive troves of data \u2013 enhanced by artificial intelligence \u2013 can target vast numbers of people almost as easily as any one person. Think defensively about how you can protect yourself from an almost inevitable attack, rather than assuming you\u2019ll avoid harm.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most important now?<\/h2>\n

That said, it\u2019s unproductive and frustrating to think you must pay attention to every possible avenue of attack. Simplify your approach by focusing on what information you most want to protect.<\/p>\n

Covering the obvious, keep your software up-to-date<\/a>. Software companies issue updates when they fix security vulnerabilities<\/a>, but if you don\u2019t download and install them, you\u2019re leaving yourself unprotected from malware such as keystroke loggers<\/a>. Also, be smart about what links you click<\/a> in your email or when browsing the web \u2013 you could inadvertently download malicious software to your phone or computer, or allow hackers access to your online accounts.<\/p>\n

In terms of online data, the most important information to protect is your login credentials for key accounts \u2013 like banking, government services, email and social media. You can\u2019t do much about how well websites and companies safeguard your information, but you can make it harder for hackers to get into your account, or at least more than one of them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Reusing login names and passwords is a significant risk.<\/span>
\nMihai Simonia\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How? The first step is to use a different username and password on each crucial site or service. This can be complicated by sites\u2019 limits on username options \u2013 or their dependence on email addresses. Similarly, many sites have requirements on passwords that limit their length or the number or type of characters that they can include. But do your best.<\/p>\n

The reason for this is straightforward: When a bunch of usernames and passwords fall into malicious hands, hackers know it\u2019s human nature to repeat usernames and passwords across many sites<\/a>. So they almost immediately start trying those combinations<\/a> anywhere they can \u2013 like major banks and email services. A chief information security officer we know in the banking industry told us that after the Yahoo breach of a few years ago<\/a>, banking sites were hit with multiple attempts to log in with credentials stolen from Yahoo.<\/p>\n

Use long passwords<\/h2>\n

There has been a lot of research about what makes a strong password<\/a> \u2013 which has often led to many people using complex passwords like \u201c7hi5!sMyP@s4w0rd.\u201d But more recent research suggests that what matters much more is that passwords are long<\/a>. That\u2019s what makes them more resistant to an attempt to guess them<\/a> by trying many different options. Longer passwords don\u2019t have to be harder to remember: They could be easily recalled phrases like \u201cMyFirstCarWasAToyotaCorolla\u201d or \u201cInHighSchoolIWon9Cross-CountryRaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

It can be daunting to think about remembering all these different usernames and passwords. Password management software can help \u2013 though choose carefully as more than one of them have been<\/a> breached<\/a>. It can be even safer \u2013 despite conventional wisdom and decades of security advice \u2013 to write them down, so long as you trust everyone who has access to your home.<\/p>\n

Use a third line of defense<\/h2>\n
\"\"
Have hackers driven us back to the age of the physical key?<\/span>
\nBautsch<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To add another layer of protection<\/a> \u2013 including against troublesome housemates \u2013 many sites (Google<\/a>, for example) let you turn on what\u2019s called multi-factor authentication. This can be an app on your smartphone that generates a numeric code every 30 seconds or so, or a physical item you plug into your computer\u2019s USB port<\/a>. While they can afford at least some protection<\/a>, be wary of sites<\/a> that send you a text with a code<\/a>; that method<\/a> is vulnerable<\/a> to interception<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With these straightforward steps \u2013 and the new mindset of thinking like a target who wants to avoid getting hit \u2013 you\u2019ll be far less worried when news breaks of the next breach of some company\u2019s enormous data files. Bad guys may get one of your usernames, and maybe even one of your passwords \u2013 so you\u2019ll have to change those. But they won\u2019t have all your credentials for all your online accounts. And if you use multi-factor authentication, the bad guys might not even be able to get into the account whose credentials they just stole.<\/p>\n

Focus on what\u2019s most important to protect, and use simple \u2013 but effective \u2013 methods to protect yourself and your information.\"The<\/p>\n

W. David Salisbury<\/a>, Sherman-Standard Register Professor of Cybersecurity Management, Director Center for Cybersecurity & Data Intelligence, University of Dayton<\/a><\/em> and Rusty Baldwin<\/a>, Distinguished Research Professor of Computer Science; Director of Research, Center for Cybersecurity and Data Intelligence, University of Dayton<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

W. David Salisbury, University of Dayton and Rusty Baldwin, University of Dayton It\u2019s tempting to give up on data security altogether, with all the billions of pieces of personal data \u2013 Social Security numbers, credit cards, home addresses, phone numbers, passwords and much more \u2013 breached and stolen in recent years. But that\u2019s not realistic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":15079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3410],"tags":[612,4257,5794,2555,5795,2288,2290],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15082"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15084,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15082\/revisions\/15084"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}