Hedge Fund Question of the Week – Winter Edition – No. 4

By John Brennan, Founding Members and AITEC Board Member

What are three keys to cybersecurity?

Answer: Think before you click, use a password manager, and employ multi-factor authentication.

Not everyone is tech savvy, and understandably so. But in this era of constant cybersecurity threats, here are three key practices to keep in mind:

  1. Think before you click. People get snagged because they are expecting an email. Then by mere coincidence they get a phishing email at about the same time covering the same topic. BOOM. People click the email and everything blows up.  A split second of skeptical caution can be huge.
  2. Use a password manager. This program generates a unique and cyber-sophisticated password for each of a user’s accounts. A person then only needs to remember one password – the one that accesses the password manager. And that password can be long and strong, but also memorable.
  3. Use multi-factor authentication. “MFA” adds an additional step to access sites like bank accounts, health insurance and even personal shopping. The extra step can be as simple as getting an access code texted to a smartphone and then adding the code to the log in. MFA slows down would-be hackers. So if a site offers MFA, us it!