Security Breaches. What to do when your favorite store or site gets hacked.
BU Information Security Presents:
Security Breaches. What to do when your favorite store or site gets hacked.
Security breaches are becoming more and more common. Recently JP Morgan, Home Depot, Goodwill, and Google have been in the news for security breaches. It is important for you to know what you should do in the event that a store where you have shopped has a security breach. If credit card information has been stolen from the store, monitor your credit card statement and your credit report. You can get one free credit report from each of the three main agencies every year by going to [ annualcreditreport.com ]. Keeping an eye on these reports can help you detect if your identity or one of your financial accounts is being used fraudulently.
If you have an account with a website that has been breached, you need to change that password. If you have used that same password on any other site, change it there, too. Always make sure you understand what information you are giving to these companies and think about what it might mean if the site is hacked. This includes posting pictures and other personal information. We keep hearing about celebrity photos being stolen from online accounts – what do you have online? What if Facebook were hacked tomorrow?
Password management is increasingly crucial. Don’t use your BU password anywhere else. Same for your email; don’t use that password anywhere else. In fact, it is best to use a different password for every account; that way if one website becomes compromised, it won’t impact others. The easiest way to do this is to use a password management tool, which allows you to remember one password and automatically keeps track of all your other passwords for you. Links to some of these password management tools are listed below.
A list of recent data breaches: [ databreachtoday.com/news ]
How to pick a good password: [ bu.edu/infosec/howtos/how-to-choose-a-password/ ]
Some respected password management tools:
• LastPass [ lastpass.com ]
• 1Password [ agilebits.com/onepassword ]
Tomorrow: Harden your accounts against hackers. Make it so that there is more than just a password between the bad guys and your sensitive stuff.