Email and security: 5 tips to make your online experience safer

Email and security: 5 tips to make your online experience safer

Security compromises have been making frequent headlines lately. You may have received emails asking you to update your passwords, or maybe you read about some of the higher profile incidents like email marketing vendor compromises resulting in sensational headlines like "McDonald's hacked and customer data stolen."

Most of these recent events related to email marketing are likely fallout from a recent increase in discovered vulnerabilities of Microsoft's operating systems and browser. We have been following these security issues closely for months as new issues continue to bediscovered. The scary part? These new discoveries are comingfaster than known issues are being fixed.

Since the majority of corporations are using Microsoft based desktops - you can imagine the havoc these problems are causing not just for home users but for companies too. The attackers taking advantage of these Microsoft vulnerabilities are smart, discovered a lot of these problems first, and used that knowledge to go after high value targets to help them spread their malwares. From what we have been able to piece together, the attackers used very targeted phishing schemes aimed at people within email marketing companies who have high levels of access to their email marketing databases. Once the attackers compromised those targets desktops, they installed key loggers and other programs to gather data, including access information. That access information was then used to steal information out of email marketing databases - simple information - like email addresses, corresponding real names, and even in some cases stored passwords.

So what can you do about it? If at all possible, switch to a Mac (or my personal favorite Ubuntu Linux), then check for and apply update regularly. However, if you are one of the 900+ million affected Microsoft users and can not switch platforms, there are a few things that may help make your online experience safer:

1) Don't trust emailattachments. Do not open attachments to emails, even if it appears to be from someone you know and trust.

2) Use abrowser other than Internet Explorer. While all browsers are susceptible to security holes, IE seems to have the most trouble patching them. Instead, download and use Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera.

3) Don't use the same password across all websites. If your information is compromised in one place, that may quickly become the case on every site you have an account. Choose a unique password for every site that requires one.

4) Turn onAutomatic Updates in Windows to ensure your machine is up-to-date. This will not help with current problems, but may help in the future.

5) Installvirus protection and keep it updated. There are a variety of options out there like Norton or McAfee that may help prevent problems that use older technology, and this is simply a best practice on any Windows machine.

Microsoft hasannounced it will release patches for 22 of the security holes this month (some of these date back to last year). It's important to note that the most recent vulnerability discovered in Internet Explorer (IE) 8 willnot be included in this month's updates. Talk to your hosting provider about cloud hosting and other options for increased online safety.

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