PORTLAND, Maine — After months of working from home, have you asked yourself if your connection to your office is secure?
Having a WiFi password is a start, but it's not enough.
October is National Cyber Security Month and for the past 17 years, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been raising awareness for Americans to stay safe online.
Defendify, a Portland-based cyber defense company, is doing the same, even offering a toolkit for free for the business community.
Co-Founder, Rob Simopoulos outlined what to look out for and how to stay two steps ahead of cybercriminals.
Simopoulos says there are different attack methods used today. Cybercriminals do their research on what you post on social media sites and can even find out who your boss is to send a phishing email targeting you or other employees.
“If someone is asking you to do something, click on a link, pay an invoice, you should really be verifying first in a different manner to make sure it’s for real,” said Simopoulos. “Today cyberattacks are coming via text messages, so it’s not just emails, you might be getting a text message to your phone in a similar manner to get you to click on a link or respond in some way shape or form.”
He suggests knowing who you interact with on social media sites, enable two-factor authentication when logging in, and changing all passwords so no two are alike.
"The fact is once they have that, your login and your password, they can do what we call the domino effect, where they can log into as many accounts as they can... your email systems, get into your bank accounts. Ensuring you have unique passwords is important,” said Simopoulos.
If you are a small business owner that works with larger companies, corporate cybersecurity teams may require a system upgrade to even continue transactions.
Defendify released their Essential Package for free for the business community so small business owners can do a cybersecurity assessment, identify weaknesses, receive threat alerts, and do a vulnerability scan of an office network.