My Birthday Wish is for you to be Cyber Safe

(Last Updated On: January 8, 2024)

To all those who pinged me via social media, thank you for remembering me on my birthday. I hope the year will be prosperous, connecting, and loving for all.

Some people ask what is my birthday wish. This year (like last year), Digital Safety “self-care” actions. These “self-care actions” will help protect you, your family, friends, community, and your organization.

These five “cybersecurity” and “Digital safety” birthday wishes cost no money, yet they can profoundly impact your safety and security in our ever-increasingly digitally interconnected planet.

Five Birthday Wishes that will help your “Digital Safety”

Patch Tenatiously. Turn on Auto Patching at Home! Check all your devices to see if they need software upgrades, and please upgrade them. More vulnerabilities will be found in 2024 and any previous year. Rapid patching of your devices is critical to your cybersecurity protection. Watch this classic TED Talk from Jaya Balo where she explains “upgrade neglect” is one of the reasons people are getting compromised by cybersecurity miscreants (see Cybersecurity every day | Jaya Baloo | TEDxRotterdam). Then, turn to your family and help them do the same for their devices. Check your TVs, game devices, and anything connected to your home. Get everything updated to the latest software. Make it hard for the criminals.

Protective DNS is Essential! Use DNS to help protect you from threats! There are free, public-benefit Protective DNS services that anyone can configure to protect against threats. Protective DNS will check all the DNS lookups from your device to see if the threat actors are using them. They will be BLOCKed if there is a match. Search for “free Protective DNS” to find many lists of protective DNS services. Configure Protective DNS for your home and your workplace.

Check your usernames and password @ Have I Been Pwned (https://haveibeenpwned.com). If they are listed, you are in trouble. Change your usernames/passwords. The criminals can use them to compromise you, your work, and your family. Cybercriminals have their databases of your compromised usernames and passwords. They will use them. Change them and teach your family how to use https://haveibeenpwned.com.

Shadowserver’s Free Cyber Civil Defence Reports is one of the best tools to protect your Organization! Shadowserver is a non-profit organization that reports Digital Safety and Cybersecurity risks for your network. Effective cyber security practitioners to adopt health security habits. These security habits are daily, weekly, and monthly. They are a combination of maintenance, mitigating (patching) exposures, remediating (fixing) vulnerabilities, and hunting those messing with your network. Many organizations use daily Shadowserver’s Free Cyber Civil Defence Reports to fix reported cybersecurity risk before the miscreant leverage for their APT, DDoS, Ransomware, and other nastiness.

Download and activate the Spoofer applications on your MAC, PC, or Linux (download from https://spoofer.CAIDA.org). Then, turn to your family and encourage them to do the same on their PC/MACs. Running Spoofer will help the Internet plug up security holes in the network that allow cybercriminals to attack other networks. (See Loading Spoofer to Fight DDoS for more details).

These five things are cybersecurity habits that are part of my birthday wishes …. To have everyone safe and secure on the Internet.

Are you looking for more practical, public-service Security Advice?

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The materials and guides posted on www.senki.org here are designed to help organizations leverage the talent around them to get started with their security activities. Start with the Operator’s Security Toolkit and Meaningful Security Conversations with your Vendors. Each is no-nonsense security for all Operators. It provides details to help them build more security-resilient networks. In the meantime, stay connected to the Senki Community to get updates on new empowerment and security insights.

Originally published at https://www.senki.org on January 8, 2024.