Cybersecurity Awareness: Know How to Secure Your Accounts

Art Miller

Make sure your accounts are secure by following best practices for passwords.

A recent survey by Third Party Trust, a risk assessment and management enterprise, found that a third of Americans have had accounts compromised, potentially exposing their personal data to cybercriminals.  

Despite this alarming statistic, the same survey shows that 63 percent do the bare minimum to meet requirements for passwords so they can move on with the task. The bare minimum password requirements can have major consequences as cybercriminals can use this to their advantage. Many people have multiple devices and provide sensitive data with passwords on various web forms. 

Taking a few moments to ensure the following password standards are met can increase the security of both your personal and professional data: 

• Use a unique password for each account. This ensures if one account is compromised, the others are not. A password manager can help you manage unique passwords across all your online accounts. 
• Enable multi-factor authentication on all your accounts. At the university, multi-factor authentication already protects your accounts. Adding it to your personal email, financial and social media accounts can help protect you online. 
• IT Services recommends passphrases. A passphrase is like a password in practice; however, it is usually made up of multiple words containing a combination of case-sensitive letters, numbers and special characters (for example, "1 Sm@ll Step 4 M@n."). Please do not use this example as your passphrase. 
• Never share or write down passwords. 

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a global effort to help everyone stay safe and protected when using technology whenever and however you connect. Simple steps such as storing data securely in OneDrive, avoiding and reporting suspicious messages and keeping software updated can go a long way toward protecting our campus community online. Throughout the month of October, get to know the basics of cybersecurity with the IT Services' Cybersecurity Checklist  and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) resources.