In observance of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, Roanoke Electric Co-op is sharing the following recommendations to help ensure our online lives stay safe and secure:
- Be a password pro. Create strong passwords that use a combination of letters, numbers and symbols, and change them regularly.
- New account, new password. Don’t use the same password for all your accounts and don’t share your passwords with anyone. Having separate passphrases for every account helps to thwart cybercriminals. At a minimum, separate your work and personal accounts and make sure that your critical accounts have the strongest passphrases.
- Think before you act. Be wary of communications that encourages you to act immediately, offers something that sounds too good to be true or asks for personal information.Hold your cursor over links in an email to view their full address before clicking, even if the email was sent by someone you know. If the link looks suspicious, contact the sender to verify the link before clicking. When in doubt, play it safe and delete it.
- Share with care. Be careful how much personal information you share online and enable privacy settings on social media networks to limit who can see what you share. Be aware that your posts can last a lifetime, and that you may inadvertently be sharing personal details about yourself or others when posting photos or videos online.
“With much of our everyday activities now online, make sure you take heed to the basic security measures that can help keep you safe,” said Kirby Jordan, Roanoke Electric’s vice-president of member services, marketing and public relations.
More information about Internet safety and privacy is available through the National Cyber Security Alliance at staysafeonline.org.