By Digitance
COVID-19 emergency has forced governments, in many countries around the world, to impose drastic measures of social distancing. One of the main consequences of this decision was the immediate increase in the use of ICT technologies, in order to fill the inconveniences imposed by this distancing.
For example, educational institutions have replaced face-to-face classrooms with remote teaching. Companies immediately began to use the “Smart Working” methods in a massive way. The ordinary citizens, forced into their homes, have used video communication as an alternative to direct socialization.
Digitance believes that human factor always remains the fundamental element in every activity, in every process. Its centrality is indisputable.
Human behaviours are a crucial element in every analysis, in every situation.
The massive use of ICT tools, in the past few months, has brought public attention to the increasingly frequent and pressing actions of hackers who, taking advantage of the situation, have become progressively aggressive.
Apart from any technological disquisition, a “first line of defence” against hacking actions can undoubtedly be represented by some “virtuous” personal behaviours towards tools and technology applications.
First, in the use of “social media”, we should never describe our habits, our lifestyles and, above all, we would never talk about our possible absences from home and from office. This is information that hackers would know how to exploit.
We should learn how to build “strong” passwords, wisely using the full range of available characters, including special ones. We should never use full names connected to us and not even places or dates.
We should create our own personal password rotation policy. We would try not to keep the same password for more than a month on the same application and create our own archive of passwords and rotation criteria, which we will keep outside of our PCs, smartphones, tablets, etc.
As far as possible, we should avoid using free email services, web conferencing, VoIP, etc. … the so-called “no-cost economy” does not cope with security. Free platforms are the preferred target of hackers, who take advantage of the intrinsic weakness of the platforms themselves.
As soon as possible, we should equip ourselves with a system for encrypting our data, our hard disks, in order to decrease their vulnerability.
These are just a few small tips, which can however start to define a virtuous behavioural model, that could be a robust base to start building – with the help of a specialized company such as Digitance Group – a real Security Management System.
