Cyber Security Awareness Month | Video

Rene Thibault | 10/1/2012

Today marks the start of the Ninth Annual Cyber Security Awareness month. It`s a month where consumers, schools, businesses and government agencies are encouraged to focus on online safety.

The summer saw several major companies like Yahoo and LinkedIn experience major password and identity hacks. This month is meant to remind homeowners and organizations that millions of people rely on security policies to protect personal information.

Mark Jantzer, the General Manager of The Computer Store here in Minot, offered some tips to keep your personal information safe online.

"If you keep your operating system up to date, if you keep a good anti-virus, anti-spam product running on your system, such as Norton Anti-virus, or McAfee or Trend-Micro, any of the major brands. And most of those have a free-ware and a paid version. And you can take your choice of those and those instances, people are going to be just fine”.

Companies also need to implement tight measure to prevent future hacks and provide users with a strong sense of security that their information will not be easily compromised. Organizations need to verify that the same security policies, such as how a user is identified, authenticated and managed, are consistent across the board.

Businesses should consider switching from third-party software providers, and take control of their own enterprise directories. They should require two-factor authentication (use passwords with a mix of characters and numbers).

Lastly, Companies should secure their mobile applications.

Taking appropriate security measures will help to protect personal computer owners, and major businesses and companies alike.

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