You've probably heard us talk about "cyber hygiene" many times before. And here we are pushing it again. This is your periodic reminder to ignore the vendor sales hype and AI doomerism in cybersecurity and make sure you have the basics in place.

With all the advances in AI, you may have heard the big providers talk about their models "escaping the sandbox" and hacking other companies. While this is scary, it's not a threat for most individuals... as long as your cyber hygiene practices are good.

What do we mean by cyber hygiene? These are things you do over and over, that don't take much effort, but get you a huge return in lowering your cyber risk. 

• Patch and update your system regularly. Don't put off that reboot either. Do it quickly when prompted.
• Keep your passwords strong and don't reuse them across services
• Use MFA wherever it is available
• Keep your strong passwords safe in a password manager - and use the tools within that password manager to continually monitor for breaches and weak passwords.
• Be mindful about where you click and who you give your personal information such as name, email address, home address, credit cards, etc.
• Be deliberate and skeptical in your inbox, text messages, and on the phone. Slow down and evaluate the circumstances and requests before taking any action

In businesses, cyber hygiene is also about actively managing your information systems.

• Manage patching deliberately with reporting on success and failure of each patch installation
• Manage user accounts deliberately and centrally so that you can lock out accounts when a user leaves or a laptop is lost or stolen
• Manage antivirus and other endpoint protection tools centrally so you have visibility into all alerts and can maintain consistent configurations
• Maintain visibility into all cloud and computer activity to detect unauthorized and suspicious actions. The earlier you catch these, the less painful they are.

These are just the basics. As regular home users, this gets you most of the way there. For businesses, it's highly recommended to build these hygiene tasks into a larger security program to ensure they are accomplished regularly and automatically, where possible.

Need help building the best program that fits your company's budget? We are here to help. Give us a call.

Reference:
https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/ai-cybersecurity-basics-billington/829777/