Criminals find it easier to steal from people online because it’s safer, more detached, easier to hide, and easier to evade capture. Cyber-crime has increased over the last few years. Symantecs’ Annual Threat Report 2019 highlighted the following shocking facts:

• One in ten web addresses are malicious
• Web attacks have increased by 56%
• Ransomware, particularly targeting mobile phones has increased by 33%
• 48% of malicious attachments are Office files
• There has been a 25% increase in the use of destructive malware.

It’s ok to be wary

The UK Cyber Survey 2019 (carried out by the National Cyber Security Centre) found that:

• 70% of those asked believed they would be the victim of a cyber crime in the next 2 years
• Most people felt that there would be a significant personal impact.

So, how can you help your customers to stay safe?

The impact can be massive, but everyone can protect themselves and make their online experience as safe as possible with just a few quick, simple steps.

7 Simple steps

These are 7 simple ways customers can protect themselves from becoming the victim of online security scams. They are recommended by the National Cyber Security Centre (the police/security services organisation who look after cyber security for UK organisations). Here’s also a leaflet you can give to customers to take away on the 7 steps to stay safe online.

1. VIP email

A customers’ email account is probably their most important digital asset. It’s central to many other processes like password reset or recovery. So it’s crucial to look after it and give it a good, strong, unique password.

2. Keep it weird

Making passwords unpredictable is a good idea. The best advice is to use three unconnected words together, and make a long password that’s easy to remember but hard for anyone else to guess. Add numbers or special characters to make it even harder to guess.

Also, it’s important they consider the accounts they already have, and review the services they use the most and update their passwords with unusual ones.

3. Passwords

No one likes remembering passwords.

Using password managers, or letting the browser manage them is a good, safe solution if they can’t remember their passwords.

This also means that they can use very long and complex passwords, which are difficult to attack.

4. Doubly secure

Two factor authentication provides an extra layer of security. If they have the option to set this up on a website or service, they should do so. This means that when they log in, they’ll be asked to provide a code or a number from a text message (or something similar).

So in the future they’ll need something they know and something they have to login, which is much safer.

5. Stay up to date

It’s a good idea to Install the latest software and keep phones or PCs up to date. Cyber criminals exploit flaws and weaknesses, so it’s a good idea to fix these problems.

Software vendors like Microsoft and Apple put lots of resource into finding bugs and fixing them, so it makes sense to take advantage of this work by applying their updates.

6. Safety whilst sleeping

Why not make all that updating easy?

By setting phones to automatically update any software upgrades. Most of the time, it’ll just apply the updates during the night. So when they use it in the morning, it’ll be up to date.

7. Have a back-up plan

If a device is stolen or compromised by a cyber criminal, data could be lost, damaged or held to ransom. So it’s important to keep a copy of all valuable data by backing up, so they can access it if they need to.