Thirteen Best Practice to StaySafe Online

The art of a safer online experience is to acquire situational awareness of cyber risks and use common sense to mitigate them. The thirteen best practices to reduce your risk exposure are:

1.    Be aware of cyber risks by regular reading of news reports on real life cyber incidents

2.    Build situational awareness on how to recognize cyber threats

3.    Use commonsense while social networking

4.    Write responsibly with proper etiquette. What you post online remains online and you remain responsible

5.    Have open discussions with your children on Internet safety

6.    Avoid use of copyrighted or pirated goods

7.    Do not get tempted by discounted offers and money making schemes

8.    Call up the institution or check for scams before replying to mails from law enforcement, financial institutions and  governments requesting personal information

9.    Do not engage in conversation or reply to mails from scammers

10.  Be careful of unsolicited mail and clicking on links within

11.  Use security software on all you devices (computer, tablet, phone) and update it regularly

12.  Use strong passwords with alternate authentication and verification options provided by sites

13.  Report cyber crime

Best Practices for Employees who Blog

When an employee posts online, responds to comments or writes blogs, the fine line between business and personal information has to be kept in mind. Online posting should ensure that the post does not tarnish the name of the company, its policies, result in loss of intellectual property, reputation, competitive business information or make it liable for legal action. Employees have a written or unwritten responsibility to follow corporate protocol on what can or cannot be written online either in personal or business capacity. A  few of the best practices which employees who blog could follow are:

1. Add disclaimers on personal blogs to state that this represent your personal opinion and not that of your company
2. Do not blog about events in your company or use the company’s logo or name
3. Do not blog about a competitor or use their logos or name
4. Respect copyright laws
5. Ensure your blogs do not divulge information of value to your company. This may include intellectual property, research or methods
6. Do not blog on topics that contravenes the reputation or is against the ethical policy of the company you work for
7. Do not make defamatory statements on the business, employees, customers, competitors or take work issues online
8. Carefully review what information is being published on your blog and remember that your reputation affects the company
9. Do not protest against your companies policies online.