October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Tuesday, October 11th, 2022 -- 8:10 AM

(Raymond Neupert, WRN) It's cybersecurity awareness month and state consumer protection officials want you to keep your computers and devices up to date.

October is cybersecurity awareness month, and state consumer protection officials want you to think about the passwords you're using. Michelle Reinen with DATCP says it's important to not reuse passwords. 

"Because once they have one and it figured it out now they have access to many things. So it's important to make sure you have multiple passwords that are long, strong, and unique."

She says it's best to either use long pass phrases that are easy for you to remember and hard for others to guess, or use a password manager program.

Reinen says that is vital to keeping your data safe from the latest emerging bugs and hacks. "That could mean that you are having to press the button to do those updates, fix those glitches, bugs and weaknesses yourself, or you're going to have to set those auto updates and make sure that they're running."

Reinen with DATCP says that's Phishing with a P-H, and that means people using phony emails and texts to try and scam you. "They pretend to be someone that you trust, and send you that too-good-to-be-true message or that scary message."

She says that could mean threats of legal action, it could be someone offering you a free prize or someone saying you need to get a refund on a product you never purchased. If you get one of these messages, just delete it.

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.