Top Tips for Staying Safe Online

The news has been full lately of high profile stories regarding online threats to computer security and these are noticeably becoming increasingly more sophisticated. Here we give a quick guide to some handy hints and tips for staying safe online, so you can help ensure your business stays protected.

Ensure your software is up to date

When it comes to making sure your computers are protected from online threats, it’s essential you keep your software up to date and install security updates. Whilst constantly updating can be a little tedious, these security updates can help protect you from a number of threats, including malware.

Privacy

Make sure you take a look at the privacy settings on your social media accounts and that you’re only sharing information with trusted sources. Always remember that what you post online can be seen by anyone - being selective with what you share, and erring on the side of caution is often a good idea, after all you can never be too careful when it comes to sharing personal information online. It’s also important to be aware that sites can also change their privacy policies and, indeed, many sites typically revise these regularly, so don’t get complacent.

Passwords

Strong and secure passwords are an essential part of ensuring you stay safe online. However, choosing a good password can be a little trickier than you might think, though there are some general rules to bear in mind that can help keep your passwords secure. For example a number of security experts agree that the length of passwords is an important factors, more so even than complexity. A lengthy, memorable password is, in fact, more difficult to guess than a shorter less memorable one, designed to be complex. Let’s say you have a 14-character password; there are significantly more possible combinations of the characters in such a password than in a 7-character password. As a result, it would take software considerably more time to go through all the possible combinations in order to discover the correct password. Using unique passwords for as many of your online accounts as possible and changing these regularly can also be beneficial.

Here at Tristar IT Support we’re IT specialists and have many years experience of providing IT support in London. So if you’re looking for IT services in London then we can help. For more information about our range of services please don’t hesitate to contact us and a member of our friendly team will be happy to help you with your enquiries.