Top tips for a cyber-safe Christmas
We're on the home stretch now. After a tumultuous year for many businesses, it's almost the end of the working year and we are wishing all of our customers and clients a joyous festive break. However, even during a season of celebrations, there are online dangers to keep in mind. Here are several tips to stay cyber-safe at Christmas.
5 Tips to Stay Cyber-Safe at Christmas
1 - Beware of seasonal scammers
Seasonal scammers know that many businesses and employees let their guard down around the festive break. As the festive wind-down ensues, they aim to take advantage of relaxed work atmospheres. That's why both you and your team must be as vigilant as you are the rest of the year when it comes to safe-surfing practices. This means avoiding sites without security certificates, scanning attachments for viruses, and avoiding any suspicious links. You could also consider an email filtering service to shut the door to spam.
2 - Consider your payment methods
Whether you're searching around for the best deal on a fake Christmas tree or a hamper for a client, it's easy to end up on a less-than-reputable website offering a deal that appears too good to be true. There's nothing wrong with seeking out a bargain, but be sure to seek out reviews of your vendor before making any payments. Equally, you may want to consider using a service like PayPal to make your payment as this will effectively mask the most sensitive information involved in your transaction.
3 - Create remote working policies
No one business is the same, and while many organisations will effectively shut up shop between Christmas and New Year - this might not be a feasible approach for some. It's important that if you or your team are expected to carry out work away from the office that you have a detailed approach together on how to stay safe. This might include the use of encrypted devices, ensuring that devices are equipped with security software, and fully updated with the latest patches and fixes.
4 -Don't gift your password away
Christmas is a time of sharing, and often oversharing. It's not uncommon at this time of year for employees to share happy photos of their family and pets and other aspects of their lives on social media. This is fine up to a point, but if their photos allow hackers to accurately guess their account passwords then you may have a problem on your hands. The best way to avoid this scenario is to build strong passwords, unrelated to personal lives. They should contain a mixture of uppercase and lowercase, symbols, and numbers. Better yet, you could use a password management service like LastPass to create unique passwords for each account.
5 - Plan ahead
One thing that almost certainly won't be on your Christmas list this year is a cyber attack. However, with businesses away for the holidays, it presents a perfect window for hackers to deploy their tools. The best way to avoid damage from either a digital incident or even a physical one like fire or flood damage is to take advantage of backups. A data backup is a virtual copy of the files held on your devices, and it can be easily restored should something happen to your originals. You can read more about backups here
If you want help protecting your business against the threats mentioned and learn more about the latest cybersecurity advancements, you’re in the right place. At ECL, our team of IT Experts would be happy to help. To learn more, get in touch with us today.