Use these 5 cybersecurity steps to protect your data, your website and your email. Find out what I’ve learned from my clients and colleagues. Here’s a bonus 5 tools to stay safe. Don’t assume your data and computers are protected.
Where do you find cybersecurity help?
Find a reputable, trustworthy person for website security and privacy by asking around. The best is to have a local person setup security and privacy on your phones, tablets, and computers.
Your email and your website will need extra cybersecurity, too. Choose a person who is inside your country. Don’t “offshore” your security. For small businesses websites, I recommend James as “a digital bouncer.”
James Ashworth, Melbourne Australia
https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-ashworth-61191522/
I recommend Michael for a businesses with complex systems, large sets of servers or international online activities
Michael Brown, Perth Australia
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelb77/
5 Steps to Lock Up Valuables
Take these five DIY steps to lock up your electronic valuables.
1. Use legit anti-virus software on all your computers (I use Avast)
2. Install anti-virus on Android phones and tablets
https://www.avast.com/en-au/android
3. Keep your iPhone and iPad systems updated
https://support.apple.com/en-au/ios/update
4. Load protection on your websites – even if you have to hire a reputable, local expert
5. Change your passwords often. It’s easier with an established password manager like
Change the password manager’s password often, too!
5 Layers of Safety and Some Digital Floatation
There are times you really need to get into a part of the web where you’ve never been before.
You’ve been invited by a friend to visit what looks like a legitimate reunion website. Or, you are staying at a hotel and desperately need access to your online banking.
Use any combination of these 5 optional protections to get what you need whilst reducing chances of a cybersecurity “injury.”
1. Check a web address without opening the website
Sucuri Site Check
https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/
2. Scramble the data going between you and the website so someone listening in cannot use it
NordVPN
https://nordvpn.com/
3. Use a covert, remote computer to do your banking (or private transactions) and then erase every trace of it before you leave
BankVault
https://www.bankvaultonline.com/
4. Google yourself by your name and your business name. Don’t recognise the website? Do NOT go to a suspicious web address. Instead use 1. Securi above to check the site or call your cyber security guard
5. If you have accounts or addresses in USA, you can monitor activity. This fee-based monitoring service offers you an option for private investigation upon request.
Identity Monitoring USA
http://legalshield.com
Be Suspicious and Report Crimes
Call your local police business number immediately if a crime has involved money, children, or your identity. They will route you to the correct investigator.
In addition to being quick about reporting the crime, keep a written log of who you talked to and when. Document any details, even vague or embarrassing bits that may have helped the criminal. Many scammers rely on shame to keep you from reporting the crime.
Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN)
https://www.acorn.gov.au/
US FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center
https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
Businesses with an Address in the USA
If the cybercrime involves a website or business with a US address, Google “attorney general” and the state where their company address is listed. Look for a complaint form.
Bonus – It’s Personal Bot It’s Not
Feeling a bit fed up by repeated emails that you cannot stop?
People running phishing scams can be overly persistent. You may have unwittingly responded to a “phake person” offering you a job, looking for romance — or asking you to hold money from their foreign empire.
Connect the sender with an email chat bot!
This chat bot will send useless fake replies to human based email scammers who won’t leave you alone. This bot only works on humans like the Nigerian Prince who needs to send you money or the love of your life who needs an urgent loan to pay for medical bills.
OK, so it’s a bit mischievous to chat up a person with a set of long-winded vague replies and dead-end questions. But, at the same time, doesn’t wasting his (or her) time feel justified?
The chat bot doesn’t have any effect on malicious links and it doesn’t do much to shut down other chat bots. The bot checks to make sure you aren’t pranking a friend and stops replying when a human agrees to end the conversation.
Scam the Email Scammers
https://www.rescam.org/