Today is World Computer Security Day! Founded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in response to rising cyberthreats, every November 30th the cybersecurity community raises awareness on ways you can stay safer on your computer and other devices.
At OPSWAT, more than 1,500 customers worldwide trust us to protect their critical infrastructure and we know what it takes to stay safe. Here are 3 things you can do right now to help protect yourself against cyberthreat infiltration on your devices.
Password Security – Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) passwords should be lengthy, complex (a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters), and not re-used. It’s time to retire “Password123!” and to start using something less guessable. Cybernews tells us that these are the 5 most common passwords—is yours on the list?
1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. qwerty
4. password
5. 12345
Keep Yourself Informed
The best software and the strongest passwords are only two parts of the complex cybersecurity equation; you, the person operating the device, are the first line of defense. Having a foundation of cybersecurity knowledge is integral to safe computing. There's no better way to learn about cybersecurity than with OPSWAT Academy, because when it comes to critical infrastructure protection training and certification, we wrote the book.
Be Proactive, Not Reactive
We know that bad actors are constantly looking for ways to get malware and ransomware onto your computer; whether it’s through a clever phishing attempt, a piece of infected removable media, or a software download, arming your machine with intelligent, up-to-date anti-virus is very important. Along with generally practicing safe computing (avoiding links in suspicious emails, keeping your machine password-protected and locked when not in use, keeping your software up-to-date, etc.), a good anti-virus solution goes a long way.
Check out OPSWAT’s free tools for better protection against malware: https://www.opswat.com/free-tools
