Security matters all the time
David Bernstein stated, “For every lock, there is someone out there trying to pick it or break in”.
The need of being secure is critical in the current generation. Simply secure means free from danger or harm. Here the danger or the harm can not be specified because it is different from person to person according to the situation. The ultimate goal of being secure is to minimize or prevent the certain harm. In order to achieve this goal, the person has to be aware of the security. Through the awareness people or the organizations can take different measures to ensure their security. But the real situation is totally opposite to the expected. The carelessness of the people has led them into danger. What caused them into risk and danger? Mainly people know the things that they needed to follow in order to be secure. But not aware of how to use them wisely.
Information is an asset. Therefore safeguarding information has become prioritized. The password is a term likely to attach with secure. A password is a word or string of characters used to authenticate a user to prove identity for accessing a resource. It has been proven recently by a research done by SplashData that people continue putting themselves at risk by using weak passwords. SplashData released the worst password list containing the weakest 25 passwords. “123456” and “password” ranked in the first two positions (Morgan, 2016). It is a must to change the default password and use long and complex passwords. Another good practice is to use different username and password for every login.
The login approval is a security feature widely used by the social medias to ensure the protection of user’s account and information while giving more control over to the user. Whenever a user logs into his account from an unrecognized computer, mobile phone or different browser he needs to enter a code which will be sent to his phone. Think about this, How many people have turned on the login approval feature? The more you spend time on social media the more you need to be secure.
Social media is a great resource to stay in touch with your friends and contacts. There is a high vulnerability of putting yourself at risk by accepting unknown requests. If a hacker got able to access your account then he can send Spam and unsolicited or malicious content to other contacts. It is highly advised not to click on unknown links. You have to be aware when sharing your contacts in social media by configuring the privacy settings. Most of the social networks are connected to each other so the contacts can be easily shared with others. You need to decide with whom you are going to share your contacts.
The review access device is the feature that allows the users to check when and where specific devices have accessed your account. So the users can get notification alerts when a new device is accessing the account. Not enabling these features will automatically put you in risk. The two-step verification used in Gmail is an extra layer of security where the user needs to enter both password and the verification code which will be sent to the mobile phone. Here the unauthorized accessing will be not allowed because both password and the security code is needed to log in.
When a browser is accessing a website which is not secure that is called as untrusted browsing because the certificate can not be validated or the encryption is not strong enough. Allowing the browser to access the untrusted websites will lead the third parties to access your confidential information. The responsibility of your own confidential information is lying on your own hand. You have the facility but why don’t you use them? Try the private browsing and make the search history empty. When private browsing it mean incognito mode disable the browser history and web cache. But there is an important point, private browsing doesn’t make you invisible or anonymous on the Internet.
Lots of mechanisms are available to secure your cyber activities you can either disable or enable those features. Secure or not be secure, the decision is up to you.