Try and hack me now: Protect yourself from the next data breach
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As you may have been able to deduce from my previous posts I live in Australia. Australia has recently introduced mandatory data breach notifications I personally think this is great. Now as a consumer, customer or client you can be sure that there is some level of accountability post breach.
So as more organisations work on beefing up their security to help lower the risk to you, what can you do to to stay safe?
Subscribe to breach notifications
Sign yourself and your family up for Breach notifications here are the best ones in my opinion:
https://haveibeenpwned.com/
https://www.lifelock.com/breach-detection
https://hacked-emails.com/
If you are a bit more technical you can have a go at using an API based service to take away a lot of the grunt work of manual checking. The haveibeenpwned.com api is super simple to use and apparently widely used by corporations, individuals and governments, you can find out how to use it at this link.
Don't reuse your passwords
Stop reusing passwords this is something I have been talking about for a long time I have written about it multiple times first in "how I stopped reusing my passwords and how you can too". This is really what makes breaches dangerous to you if your account is in a breach then theres a good chance that your password or an easily crackable version password is out there forever - now it doesn't take a great cognitive leap to work out that if all your passwords are different who cares if somebody has you old LinkedIn password from 3 years ago that you used once for 3 months, it's history now.
Disposable payment methods
Worried about using your card online? don't then you can buy prepaid debit cards or travel cards where you can load money onto and spend. that way worst case you can only loose the limited amount of money you placed on the cards. Best case somebody isn't able to buy a $15000 Rolex on your credit card.
PayPal and Crypto's are also a good choice here but with their pro's there are always a few additional cons i.e. hard to get money in and out of Crypto, If your living a lifestyle where you travel often and regularly you may not be able to administer your PayPal account and dispute any fraudulent transactions.
Use good Security Apps
There is a whole bunch of good security apps out there, seriously I even wrote my own you probably heard me talk about it in "Jump the Shark" On a serious note theres a whole bunch of good free and premium security software and if you enjoy projects there is numerous handy Security and privacy projects you can easily deploy onto Raspberry Pi.
For personal use I alway advocate my own creation PassVult: The Ultimate Anti-Cloud Password manager which now has a check for breaches feature where you can see if your accounts have turned up in any breaches. But don't take my word for it theres a whole bunch of Stelar reviews Online.
Its also important to note you should always have the basics covered e.g. Antivirus and Firewall but look out for products with "Security Smarts" built in which is becoming more common for Routers and appliances to protect your woefully insecure IoT devices.
Until Next time!
The Security Sleuth