Cyber Awareness

‍Cyber awareness: Beef up your passwords

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Weak passwords risk breaches of confidentiality. The easiest way to protect yourself from cyber threats is by having a strong and unique password.  Strong passwords are a combination of upper- and lower- case letters, numbers and special characters (not a number or a letter).  The longer and more complex your password, the more difficult it is to crack.  Passwords are the best form of defence to prevent unauthorised access, so make sure you keep them private and out of sight of others.


‍Useful Tip: You should not be using the corporate email addresses to sign up for personal third party services e.g. cloud storage providers, recruitment agencies, open source software accounts. If these services are breached, and you reuse passwords across accounts, then this can be a huge threat to your organisation. Leaked credentials like this can provide a simple way in for an attacker.

It is always best to avoid using corporate email addresses to sign up for external non-business related services where possible.

Guidance on keeping safe and secure whilst working from home

Read More on keeping safe working from home - Click Here

Cyber awareness: Are you on a secure website?

The padlock on your web browser’s toolbar means that information you transfer on the website is concealed by code (encrypted). 

If an unauthorised third party managed to intercept this information, it would look like garble to them. Therefore, when entering sensitive information online such as addresses, passwords and bank details, it is in your best interest to check if the padlock icon is showing before sharing this information.  ‍Useful Tip: The padlock only means communications are encrypted, not that the website is genuine. 

You can always use multiple sources of information to verify if a link to a website is genuine, for instance by examining the URL for suspicious wording or formatting, opening a new tab and navigate to the company’s legitimate website through a reputable search engine and checking out contact details and social media activity for that company. 

Text Message Scam 

Be aware that scammers are targeting Vodafone mobiles with texts about bill payments. These are not genuine texts, so please delete these messages. You may receive texts from Vodafone which are genuine, but only if you have gone over the 2GB per phone monthly limit which then details the unit cost per 250MB.
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