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5 Tips to Stay Secure

Posted on: October 8th, 2019

We all value privacy and security, and 5 tips to stay secure can be beneficial to any law firm.

We take great strides in our daily lives to protect what is most important. The same goes for your firm’s website.  All websites should have an SSL Certificate. This will encrypt the traffic from your website to the end user. Sites without an SSL will actually be penalized by Google. Also, having strong passwords on every access point on your website, web server, and database is equally important.

Your Personal Security is also important.

There is an old adage. If a thief wants in bad enough, they will get in. That may or may not be true.  However, what is on the other side of the door waiting for the thief? Is it what they are seeking or another vault to crack? By putting yourself in the thief’s shoes, you are able to see potential vulnerabilities in your firm’s processes and your personal life as well.

The following tips can be used to help you to stay secure:

Use a Different Password, Change it Often!

We enjoy life that is uncomplicated. And having the same, simple password on all accounts makes life easy for us.  It also makes it super easy for someone to gain access to all of your accounts. The first step in securing your password to to have a long to guess password  Using at least 20 characters, using UPPER CASE, lower case, Numbers and Symbols will help make it secure. Often we use a password generator to accomplish this.  For example the password: quMvsA%Y2a7@#8P%UI72 will take 43 Quintillion Years for a Computer to crack the password. See How Secure is My Password to check your password.

A password manager is a helpful tool to remember your passwords

Your 1 Master Password will unlock your other passwords that you have stored into the software.  Last Pass in an excellent choice when it comes to this.  The free option is more than ready to remember your passwords to your online accounts and auto fill them in via a web browser plugin. When it comes to passwords keep in mind the following:

  1. Separate your work logins from home logins.
  2. Use Different Passwords (Never put your all your eggs in one basket.)  
  3. Your firm’s passwords should always be different then your personal logins. (You never want to compromise any account by mixing passwords.)
  4.  If you are using the same password manager at work and home, you should have a separate login for each location.  
  5. Likewise, you should use Incognito or private browsing when looking up personal email at work.

Use a forwarding phone number

Do you like getting Spam Phone Calls?  I think not. It’s a good idea for your family, partners, doctors, and other trusted individuals ,to have your cell number. For all others use a forwarding phone number. Google Voice is a great option. It will provide you with a free phone number and an app that you can install on your phone to make calls from that free number. I kept getting calls that my Auto Warranty was about to expire. I was able to track down how I got on the list. Turns out my auto dealership gave me a free subscription to CarFax. In turn, my phone number was added to someone’s list.  Because of my settings in Google Voice, I was able to ignore this call and have it go straight to Voicemail.

Buy and Use a Cross Cut Shredder

Most offices have a Shredder while most homes do not. Shredder prices have come down in recent years and some have options like Whisper Quiet operation, CD/DVD Shredding, and Credit Card Shredding.  Anything that has your name, address, or any personal information that arrives in your mailbox should be shredded if you don’t plan on keeping it for your records. If you don’t have a shredder at your home, there may be free shredding events in your community. Take advantage of any opportunity to protect your documents.

Be Careful What You Post and Share

You would be surprised how many people incorrectly forward an email to all their friends.  Not using BCC as an option exposes the email list if someone forwards the same email down the line.  When it comes to posting to social media, be careful what you share. The New York Post reports that 160,000 Facebook pages are hacked a day. Sometimes we forget that the details matter. You never want to post something that can be potentially be used to gain access to an online account.

We hope you have found these tips helpful. If you are experiencing security issues with your website, our team of experts are on standby ready to help.