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Cybersecurity and You: Own IT

  • Published
  • By 2nd Lt. John McGrady
  • 436th Communications Squadron
Social media, smart devices and phone applications are the new wild west of the 21st century. Websites and apps come and go by the day, with people flocking to each and leaving just as quickly. With each new trend and each new app, comes a bevy of new potential risks to you, the consumer, from malicious actors, such as nation-states, criminal organizations, the lone hacker and companies wishing to harvest your data for profit. The good news, however, is that you can take steps to mitigate risks to you, your family and your data. For this week’s cybersecurity awareness article, we will be discussing “owning” IT and how to secure our social media profiles and maintain our privacy online.

The first step to staying safe online is securing social media profiles. There are many simple ways to do this. The first is to change our passwords. As much as we hate the long, overcomplicated government passwords we are forced to memorize, the simple fact is, they exist for a reason. A long, complex password is the key to thwarting many types of password-cracking software and makes it harder for others, including bots, to get into your account. A very simple way to do this is to take a phrase, such as, “I love my kids so much,” and turn it into a password such as, “1l0V3mYK1d550mUCH.” This keeps a password easy to remember, and using a simple trick, like turning Is into 1s and ss into 5s, makes it very easy to keep track of where numbers should be. It is also important to not reuse passwords for different accounts.

Once that is taken care of, we can now look at your privacy settings. Limiting who can see your posts is incredibly important. There have been instances in the past of people using pictures and posts found on social media to stage robberies or home invasions. We must be careful of what we share. According to SecurityToday.com, “Avoid sharing personal information online, because your information, including your email address, phone number and social security number, is worth a lot of money to hackers and data mining companies. Take a look at your social media profiles, and try to keep them barren — the people who need to know your birth date, email address and phone number already have them.” An additional consideration for military members and their spouses/families is keeping exercise/deployment dates off social media, as well as any other information the general public should not have access to. 

Finally, keep track of your apps. Many apps will ask for things like your address book or contacts, as well as location services, when you install them. It is important that as military, DoD civilian, or contractor, we disable certain functions, such as geolocation/geotagging on applications in general – but especially downrange. According to a CNN article on the matter, running with an app that records geographical information can “provide valuable information on patrol routes or where specific personnel are deployed ... It could also pose a danger for government officials posted in dangerous locations, like diplomats, who may not be in as secure locations as military personnel.” It is events like this and the failure to lock down applications that can result in very real and very deadly consequences for us and our military brothers and sisters.

In conclusion, stay safe online, protect your passwords, avoid sharing personal details to strangers online, make your accounts private and make sure your applications and mobile devices are not broadcasting information they shouldn’t. By doing this, you can protect yourself and “own” IT!