Recently I attended the Investment News Women’s Advisor Summit. Great event, Investment News! So much information which I will be sharing with you in future blogs.
One of the most riveting presentations was about cybersecurity by Erin Donham of Charles Schwab. I know, you don’t believe me, but that’s okay. I’ll give you the most important part. Erin emphasized this at least 10 times, so I know she meant it.
You have GOT to stop using the same password for all of your accounts. And, your passwords need to be long and have lots of letters and numbers and funny characters. This goes for your gym password and your Amazon password and your bank password and your Bed Bath and Beyond password.
Why? Because if your gym password is the same as your bank password and someone hacks the gym’s website (or more likely your e-mail), they have access to your bank account. What fun!
Also, Erin emphasized setting up additional authentication (text to your cell phone with a code) for extra protection. She says that a huge percentage (it was something like 80%) of scams and hacks can be avoided by using strong, unique passwords and having that extra code sent to your phone. Not e-mail, that’s very hackable.
How are you supposed to remember all of these unique fancy passwords? You can’t, so invest in a password manager. I use LastPass. The system generates a unique, bizarre password with a click every time I have to set up a new user name on a website. It then stores the information in an online vault where I can look things up or have them populate on the websites I’m using on my computer.
At first, when I got LastPass I wasn’t using the secure password generator. Then my work e-mail and website got hacked (you may have been the recipient of that message) and I got serious about changing all of my passwords using the password generator.
Still haven’t set up the 2-factor identification on many sites yet, but thanks to Erin’s encouragement (and cheerful stories of dire consequences) I will!
