By Blake Haas
BLOOMINGTON – October is national cybersecurity month, and a local Information technologist (IT) is providing tips to avoid scams that could cost millions.
Whether a small business or a large corporation, Scott Stevens with Integrity Technology Solutions in Bloomington, said scammers and hackers are looking to infiltrate personal devices by any means possible.
“Cybersecurity is a way to make people aware of the threats that are out there. (And) to make people aware of the different methods that hackers are trying to use to deceive us. It’s important that we consider what the bad guys are trying to do. We use October, national cybersecurity month, to highlight best practices. There are things that are very practical that consumers and businesses alike should implement to increase their security readiness.
Some of those practices include multifactor authentication (MFA)…There are actually three main factors that people can use to prove that they are who they say they are. It can be something you know, something you have, or something you are. Something you know would be like a password, something you have would be a token of some type of app on a mobile device. And something you are is a fingerprint or a palm print or retina scan or even facial recognition.”
Stevens said using a fingerprint, or a token plus a password can avoid hackers or email phishing scams.
“We always recommend do not ever open an attachment or click on a link that comes from an unsolicited email.”
In addition, Stevens said hackers are holding personal information hostage for untraceable cryptocurrency.
“Even if you’re using Facebook, even if it’s on your Microsoft 365 account, if it’s on a VPN (a virtual private network) on any kind of connection or any type of system that supports multifactor authentication (MFA), please set it up and use it. It’s really not that complicated. If you’re challenged, find help with it.
Another thing that we recommend is that people should have a plan.”
According to Microsoft, 99.9% of breaches would be prevented if society used multifactor authentication.
Blake Haas can be reached at Blake.Haas@Cumulus.com.
