Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2024: The Top Four Ways to Secure Our World

Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2024: The Top Four Ways to Secure Our World
madhav
Tue, 10/01/2024 – 06:44

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Cybersecurity Awareness Month is an international initiative that focuses on simple ways to protect ourselves, our families, and our businesses from online threats. The 2025 theme “Secure Our World” highlights the pervasiveness of digital technologies that enable connections across the globe and how straightforward, yet effective measures can have a lasting impact.

In a world where our digital lives are increasingly intertwined, every attack vector secured increases the safety of other connected people. And considering how connected we all are to our devices, networks, and the internet at large, this can be a lot of us.

Key Cybersecurity Practices to Implement

1. Use Strong Passwords and a Password Manager

Sadly, less than 40% of all online users use a distinct password for each account, according to the National Cybersecurity Alliance 2023 Oh Behave! report. Reused passwords give cybercriminals bonus access to other areas of a person’s digital life when they’ve only done the work to steal (or buy, or crack) a single credential. Aside from having a different login for each site, current wisdom (a la CISA) suggests that a strong password contains:

• At least 16 characters.
• Randomization, with a mix of letters, symbols, and numbers.
• Potentially a “passphrase” of 4-7 words, although randomization is recommended.

However, even strong and unique passwords have well-documented limitations and risks. As threat actors get savvier about targeting our access credentials, the industry is gradually moving away from passwords altogether and into a passwordless future. This means switching wholesale to other forms of authentication, which may leverage biometric data, PINs, patterns, and passkeys in place of passwords. With more and more platforms supporting passkeys and passwordless authentication, moving away from passwords is becoming easier and fri

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