What Is Internet Security and How to Protect Yourself From Cyber Threats in 2021

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What Is Internet Security and How to Protect Yourself From Cyber Threats in 2021


General Recommendations

The New Year is already on the doorstep, and the outgoing year 2020 made it clear that you need to be prepared for many situations. One of these situations is hacking your accounts and computers, stealing your personal data. To protect yourself, there are many recommendations. In particular:


Use of licensed software - from the operating system to individual programs;

Timely software update;

Downloading programs only from the manufacturer's website. The same goes for drivers;

Using a VPN not only to bypass blocked sites but also when working with important resources, especially when connecting to public Wi-Fi at the university, cafes, restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and airports;

Correct creation and storage of account passwords.

Useful Resources

On this topic, at the invitation of the Association of People's Assessors, I recently conducted a separate training, in preparation for which I used the resources below. I want to share them so that you can explore on your own and be a little more secure in the new 2021.


Theory

Acronis report on the main cyber threats faced by users this year and forecasts for 2021. It also provides guidance on how to prevent these threats. The report is in English, but when did this stop a person striving for knowledge ?! Especially if you have Google Translate;

Wikipedia material, in general, about what Internet security is ;

A review of some Internet threats is purely for theoretical enlightenment;

Internet security advice from a much more advanced and professional Internet security specialist which he shared at one of the training. The material is posted on my site Alifbo.Media ;

This link is a very interesting resource where you can see the spread of various threats (read, in particular, viruses and malware) around the world. And here you can see statistics for the last 24 hours in Tajikistan. You may notice that one of the types of threats is listed as HackTool.Win32.KMSAuto - this is nothing more than an activator program for Windows and MS Office, of course, for their illegal activation (theft). Most often, DangerousObject.Multi.Generic is detected - This is likely a virus that has not even been properly recognized.


Personal data

What exactly is meant by “personal data” and their protection in the legal field of our country is specified in the Law of the Republic of Tajikistan “On the Protection of Personal Data”. At this link you can familiarize yourself with the text of this law;

A little theory and some pretty practical advice on protecting your personal data can be found on this site. After all, having a law is one thing, but you yourself need to take measures to protect your data;

Sometimes it may seem to you that no one on the Internet knows anything about you. But believe me, your IP address alone is enough to collect a certain amount of data about a person and his device. 

But if you have a smartphone-based on Android OS, then Google already has a lot of data about you. To check how much Google knows about you, go to myactivity.google.com and log in with your account. According to the company, there you can delete the collected information, although no one can guarantee whether they will, in fact, be deleted from Google's servers;

Another resource that you have come across more than once that can show how Google tracks your movements around the world is called Google Maps. On a separate "Timeline" tab, you can see what data about your movements Google has. You can see the route of your movement directly on Google maps.

Passwords

You can check how strong your password is and how long it will take for cybercriminals to guess it on this site ;

But using this link you will have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the most insecure and common passwords. If you see your password in this list, change it urgently;

You can read about how to create a good password here;

Creating a password is one thing, but how do you store the hundreds of passwords that pop up when you sign up on a wide variety of platforms? Some, of course, use the same password on different platforms, but this is a big threat in itself, because having learned your password on one of the vulnerable platforms, attackers will automatically gain access to many of your other accounts. Therefore, I recommend using password managers - special programs that help you create and manage your own password database. I am using the KeePass program ;

By default, KeePass stores your passwords in a special file inside your computer, so if you are using the KeePass app on your smartphone, passwords are not synced by default. But this can be customized by yourself. You can read how to set up password synchronization via KeePass on different devices on my website Alifbo.Media.

Two-factor authentication

Sometimes having a strong password is not a guarantee of security. Therefore, if the service you are using allows you to set up two-factor authentication, be sure to set it up. In simple terms, two-factor authentication is a two-step sign-in. At the first step, you enter your username and password, and at the second, the code that comes to you in the form of an SMS. Of course, there are other options besides SMS. You can find out what options are available to protect your Google account from my article " How to set up two-factor authentication in your Google account. "

Disk / File Encryption

You can read about what file encryption is in many materials on the network. One of them is available at this link ;

There are various disk encryption tools. BitLocker is one of them. This article shows detailed instructions on how to encrypt files on your computer using BitLocker.


Antivirus

Antivirus solutions are also quite complicated. Therefore, the choice of antivirus programs should be treated with care and attention. Their theoretical knowledge is very useful, but their product itself, in my opinion, remains rather dubious. For the same reason why I don't trust a free VPN. Therefore, from antivirus software, I would recommend it Protegent360.

Open-source software

Along with paid programs, there are free ones that you can trust, but only if we are talking about open source programs. If you don't want to pay for MS Office, instead of installing its jailbroken version, use its free counterpart Libre Office ;

Instead of jailbreaking Windows, it's better to upgrade to one of the Linux distributions. Newbies will love Linux Mint with its Cinnamon desktop environment. Outwardly, it is similar to the usual Windows. Moving to Linux also means that most viruses that roam the network will not touch you at all, because they work exclusively in the Windows environment. They will no longer pose a serious threat to you.

Post Scriptum

Naturally, the above tools and security measures are not an absolute guarantee of protecting your data and devices. It should not be forgotten that even on the eve of the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, a person remains the most vulnerable point of any computer networks due to a lack of digital knowledge and competencies. After all, no matter how much your antivirus screeches about the threat it has found, if you cannot understand what the notifications are shown to its mean, its work will be of little use. Therefore, do not stop learning and relearning - this is the most important trait of a modern person. Especially when it comes to new technologies and their use in life.

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