Every day, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people and companies that are getting hacked, with or without an IT support Portland specialist by their side. The escalation of the network and system breaches is very alarming, and black hat hackers are becoming more skilled in performing cyber crimes. And as an IT professional, you need to up your game and do everything necessary in order to outwit the hackers and help you clients maintain a safe and secure networks and systems. Cyber threats and cyber criminals may never be completely eliminated from this world, but at least you know how to play their game and you can provide guidance to your clients in what to do. In this post we will explore the methods to outwit the black hat hackers.
Understand the intent of hackers
In any kind of war, it is crucial to understand your enemy so can better prepare for war and outwit them. Same goes for your fight as IT support Portland specialist against cyber criminals. You need to understand that the pure intent of hackers is to exploit the systems and data of your clients so they can earn loads of money from their destructive actions. All black hat hackers care about is the fame and money that comes with their exploits. You have to understand their greed of money so you can profile them in your own way and prepare for the fight.
Continue learning
Hackers do not rest until they perfect their breach craft, and so you must not stop learning as well. Continue to evolve in your field, and make sure that you update yourself with everything new in the IT industry. If there are new technologies available, study them. If there are new IT certifications, then enroll in the classes and get your new certificates. Your job as an IT support Portland specialist is an ongoing process that requires constant studying. But it is only in feeding your skills and brain with the latest trends in cybersecurity that you can better protect your clients from being exploited.
Practice using strong passwords
You are responsible for advising your clients to create strong passwords, because having passwords that cannot be cracked is one of the best ways to outwit black hat hackers. It is crucial that you provide guidance to your clients on how to come up with the strongest passwords, and here are some tips on creating impossible to breach company passwords:
- Strong passwords are typically not less than eight characters, and they are typically a combination of letters, symbols, and numbers. Also, they have letters that are patterned in lowercases and uppercases. It would surely confuse hackers when your client’s passwords are a combination of upper cases, lower cases, numbers, and symbols. So help your clients with setting up. Of course, the password combo is not easy to memorize so have them write it down and put the password in a very safe place, and that does not include saving the password in the computer.
- Many people bunch together the combination of numbers and symbols, which is actually not a good practice. Spread out the placement of the upper case and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols to make the passwords more confusing to hackers. So as an IT support Portland specialist, guide your clients accordingly.
- Never allow your clients to use obvious password combination like name, birthday, or consistent numbers. Make the passwords far from any personal details as possible, because black hat hackers operate in the thinking that people uses their personal information to create passwords, which is often true.
- As a highly skilled IT support Portland specialist, you should suggest a two-factor authentication to your clients. This is a bit of hassle, but is extremely safe, especially if the computers contain heavily sensitive data that could cripple the company of black hat hackers get their hands on what is inside. The two-factor authentication works by the system to send a verification password to your client’s mobile number, and they would need to enter the code to the computer together with their strong password before they gain access.
- Avoid using words from the dictionary, no matter how sophisticated or difficult they are to spell or pronounce. You need to understand that cyber criminals are equipped with a program that searches for dictionary words to check for password matches. So as much as it may seem like a good idea, tell your clients to avoid using the dictionary as reference for finding strong passwords. Help your clients to formulate out of this world password, and something that is not related to their company or personal lives.
- Your clients need to understand that they must never use the same password in all their accounts. It is quite a common practice for people to have one password only that can open all their accounts due to the convenience of memorizing only one complex password. But, as a reliable IT support Portland specialist, you know that this practice is absolutely wrong. So let your clients know that they must have different passwords, because if one account is hacked, the other accounts can be breached using the same password.
- It is crucial that you provide guidance to your clients by advising them to regularly change their passwords. It is a hassle, but it is required in order to keep the accounts, systems, and networks safe and secure. It is too risky to have the same password for months, so better have your clients change them at least once a month.
Conclusion
Black hat hackers thrive in their knowledge and skills to breach networks and systems, but you as an IT support specialist must do what you can to outwit the cyber criminals. Always keep in mind that you and the hackers both have the skills to preserve or destroy the cyber world. You have what it takes to preserve cybersecurity as IT support Portland.
