How To Help Your Kids Prepare For a Cyber-Safe School Year

In today’s digital age, you must equip your children with the knowledge and tools to navigate the online world safely. Students ages 5 to 80 need to understand they are targets of cyber crooks who want their personal information. From understanding the importance of strong passphrases to recognizing the signs of AI phishing scams and threats, there are several steps parents can take to develop a cyber-safe environment. Cybercrime is a human problem which can be solved if you help your students build their human firewall. In this blog post, I will help you explore practical tips and strategies to help your kids stay safe and secure online throughout the school year. Here's what you need to know.

Don't turn a blind Eye to AI. AI isn't this all-knowing aware chatbot who can help you create new content, it is just scaping information off the web. Let your kids know they need to be caution of what information they share on AI, it might be leaked on the web. Also, you need to tell your kids to beware of AI-based phishing and cyber attacks that can lure them in with a variety of scams that are fueled with deepfakes and voice cloning. Visit Google's phishing quiz at https://phishingquiz.withgoogle.com/ to help your students stay safe from any phishing attacks:

Use Easy to Remember Passphrases. Passphrases are two unrelated words to create a strong password. Passphrases like "PurpleFox2021$" or "StolenBumble!243" are stronger than your garden variety of random numbers and characters to protect your kids online accounts. Visit Bitwarden's password and passphrase generator at https://bitwarden.com/password-generator/

Make Sure You "Back That Thang Up. Encourage students to stop carrying around important information on flash drives and external hard drives which can be misplaced, stolen, and can fail at a moment's notice. The cloud is the only way to go. Cloud services like Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive automatically copy your data to the cloud which ensures their precious information is always backed up.

Keep Track of Lost and Stolen Devices. Enable Find My to keep track of stolen devices. Get your student an Apple or Android alert to get alerts when devices are missing.

Make Sure Your Students Information isn't on the Dark Web. With data breaches occurring on a regular basis, you need to verify your kids information isn't floating on the dark web. Many companies don't disclose when they are responsible for leaking customer's information to the dark web. Once criminals have access to your information, they can commit ID theft, log into and take over social media accounts and access web backup services. Check out haveibeenpwned.com This website will let you know if your students' information such as passwords, social security numbers, and email addresses have been leaked on the dark web and if they should get ID protection.

Hopefully, this will give you tips to help your students stay safe this school year. If you enjoyed this posts, let me know in the comments below. If you have any questions, please reach out via email or on social media. I'm always available.

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