Tips for securing your identity against cybersecurity threats

This post is authored by Simon Pope, Principal Security Group Manager, Microsoft Security Response Center.

Introducing new video on best practices from the Microsoft Cyber Defense Operations Center

Ask any CISO or cybersecurity professional about their greatest security challenge, and it’s a good chance the answer will be “the actions of our people.”

While virtually all employees, contractors, and partners have the best of intentions, the fact is that protecting their online credentials, identifying and avoiding phishing scams, and evading cybercriminals is getting more difficult each day. More of our time each day is spent online, and as more financial transactions and social activities are conducted online, adversaries are becoming ever-more sophisticated in their cyberattacks.

Microsoft faces these same threats, and we have made deep investments in training our people to be more aware and diligent in the face of such dangers. Our cybersecurity success depends on our customers’ trust in our products and services, and their confidence that they can be safe on the internet. To help keep our customers and the global online community safe, we want to share some of our Cyber Defense Operations Center’s best practices for Securing your identity against cybersecurity threats in this video.

In this video, we discuss some best practices around securing your identity, such as avoiding social engineering scams that trick people into giving up their most sensitive secrets, recognizing phishing emails that falsely represent legitimate communications, and how to spot false impersonations of your trusted colleagues or friends. We also discuss some of the types of information you don’t want to share broadly (i.e. credentials, financial information and passwords), and tips for protecting your sensitive data.

Some cybersecurity tips that we discuss include:

• Be vigilant against phishing emails
• Be cautious when sharing sensitive information
• Don’t automatically trust emails from people you know, it may not be from them
• Keep your software up-to-date

Please take a few minutes to watch the video and share it with your colleagues, friends and family. We all need to be diligent in the face of this growing and ever-more sophisticated threat. And check back next week for our second video on Protecting your devices from cybersecurity threats, and in two weeks, we will share more on Protecting your information and data from cybersecurity threats on the Microsoft Secure blog.

Additional resources:

• Microsoft Safety & Security Center
• Microsoft Secure
• Microsoft Security Response Center Blogs on TechNet

from Microsoft Secure Blog Staff