As per recent stats, cybercrime will inflict $10.5 trillion worth of damage annually by 2025. That is, of course, a huge amount of money and it clearly demonstrates that we need to focus on healthy cybersecurity habits if we want to keep these cybercrime expenses as low as possible.
There are various everyday habits that can make a user dangerously vulnerable to various cybersecurity threats online. You may or may not know about it, but you may end up paying a hefty price for such mistakes in the end.
If you are a Mac user, the following will sum up some of the worst cybersecurity habits that you may consider fixing if your device’s security matters to you. Let’s dive in.
Reusing Same Passwords For Multiple Accounts
Macs currently rank among the safest devices. However, if someone out there knows its password, no one can save your data from being compromised.
It can get worse if the password for your Mac is also the password for your Facebook, bank account, and other apps. It may come as a surprise, but password reuse is still a common practice. As per Comparitech, around 2/3rd of the people use the same password for multiple accounts.
Now, imagine if you have a weak password and a hacker gets hold of it. Not only one, but multiple accounts of yours will be exposed.
To make sure that something like this does not happen, set strong passwords. On top of that, keep them unique for all your accounts. If you face issues with remembering them, make use of a password manager when using your Mac.
Clicking on links before investigating
If you are a regular internet user, you must have come across messages or on-page pop-ups related to winning a lottery or similar.
These messages are targeted based on social engineering and classified as phishing attacks. The key purpose of these attacks is to make the user click on the malicious link to get a hold of their personal data, especially financial data.
These messages are formulated in a way to make people feel the urgency to click on the link. To ensure that you do not lose your hard-earned money, take your time investigating if the entity is genuine or not. Refrain from clicking on anything that pops up on the screen as it can have bad consequences in a matter of minutes.
Not creating a backup
Most of us store our data simply by saving it on our devices without ever bothering to make backups. But what if you get locked out of your Mac? What if your Mac gets hit by a ransomware attack, and your data gets forcibly encrypted?
In many cases, the only remaining option is paying the ransom, though many users instead decide to just settle with parting with the stolen data forever.
Ransomware attacks continue to be on the rise and the tendency suggests they will not slow down anytime soon. As per stats, ransomware attacks nearly doubled in the first half of 2021.
So, the ideal way to handle this is to have a backup of your data. It is advisable to keep especially sensitive data backed up in an external hard drive that is not connected to the web.
Conclusion
Our daily habits are what makes a difference when it comes to cybersecurity. To keep your private information hidden from the prying eyes of hackers, we need to ensure that we improve our everyday habits.
Image Credit: Adi Goldstein on Unsplash
