These are things you MUST do

I've covered shards of "how to be properly secure" — both as an everyday user and as a company — across plenty of articles.

I've covered shards of "how to be properly secure" — both as an everyday user and as a company — across plenty of articles. In today's article I'd like to put together a summary of the most important practices for a regular user, the ones that should protect you against the vast majority of attacks.

1.      Use strong, unique passwords

No, having "Anicka7" on every account really isn't enough. Every password should have at least 12 characters — better 14 or more — and include uppercase and lowercase letters, a number, and a special character. How am I supposed to remember all those? A password manager! There are hundreds of them; pick one you like and use it!!! One warning: do not set the same password you have on every account as the master password to the password manager — otherwise it won't protect much.

2.      MFA everywhere

If it's available, turn it on! Multi-factor authentication isn't a 100% save-all, as I show in THIS article — but even so, it's a fantastic backup layer of protection.

3.      Be generally cautious

The most common way data and accounts get stolen is phishing. Someone sends you an email or a message with a fake login page, you sign in with your super-strong password, and that's the end of it. These pages can usually redirect you to the actual site you wanted to log into, and if you were already signed in there, you won't even notice. So how do you defend against phishing? It's pretty simple: be very careful and don't let yourself be pressured. Check URLs (or type them in directly), and if anyone is pushing you to do something within a short time window, be especially careful.