Now that we’re all glued to our keyboards, online shopping, banking, and social media have become major players in our daily lives. It’s time to take a step back and realize that with this convenience comes serious risk. If you’re not careful, hackers can get access to your bank account or even run up huge bills on your credit card.

How can you achieve the highest level of security with only a few tweaks? Here’s how:

1. Use Cryptography! 

It’s probably not news to you that technology has been advancing at an amazing rate over the last decade. This means hackers have been developing new ways to get their hands on your personal information from miles away. So here’s the first hurdle – make it hard for them by taking advantage of cryptography! To begin, a cryptographic White-Box, as one of the best cryptographic tools, should be set up with a public key and a private key for you to use throughout your online shopping experience. Simply put, cryptography is a method used to encrypt data so it can’t be read without knowledge of a key or password. 

The most common methods are “symmetric” and “asymmetric.” With symmetric encryption, both parties share a single secret key that’s used to both encrypt and decrypt the data. Asymmetric encryption uses two keys, where one of these keys is kept private, while the other is shared publicly. This way, you can share sensitive information with your intended recipient without worrying about it getting into the hands of someone else!

2. Keep Your Passwords Complex And Change Them Often

Don’t use “password123” as your password. That makes it easy to hack by computer software programs known as password crackers. However, it’s also important not to make things too complicated because then you’ll end up forgetting them! So what do you do? The best passwords are long but random – think 20+ characters using numbers, letters (both upper and lower case), and symbols.

Don’t use personal information like your birthday, your spouse’s name, or anything else that can be found on social media sites for your passwords. And never use the same password across multiple websites or accounts – this will protect you if one account is hacked but leave all of them vulnerable at once! Also, some experts recommend changing your passwords every month. This way even if someone does crack your current password they’ll have to work quickly to access the contents of any other accounts you have. It may seem cumbersome now, but it’s worth it in the long run!

3. Make Sure You Never Use Your Email Address As Your User Name On Any Site

This means no user name with “@gmail.com” or “@yahoo.com” or “@hotmail.com.” Hackers know these are some of the most common email domains on the internet, so they will be trying to guess your user name along with a password in an attempt to break into your account! Also,  sometimes a hacker can gain access to your email by guessing the password. If this happens, they have the ability to read all of your emails and send emails from your account as if they were their own. In other words, they could be using your account right now without you even knowing about it!

4. Install Anti-Virus Software On All Your Computers

You may have had a virus on one of your devices before and not even realized it – that’s how fast and sneaky they can be! If you don’t have anti-virus software installed, there is no way to find out if you’ve been hacked unless something goes wrong. In addition to protecting your computer from viruses, many of them offer firewall protection which is another desirable feature when shopping for antivirus programs.

5. Be Careful With Social Media Sites

Although most social media sites like Facebook and Twitter don’t pose as much of a threat as email accounts do, they still store the personal information you wouldn’t want out in the open! Plus, every time you read an article about a major security breach on one of these sites, it’s usually because they haven’t done enough to protect your data. So be smart and limit how much information you share with them and everyone else. We all want high levels of online security without spending half our day trying to figure out passwords and user names – so why not implement some cryptography? It may seem difficult at first but it is well worth the effort!

The internet is a great place but it’s important to stay safe when surfing the web. The best way to do this is through cryptography, getting long and complex passwords, never using your email address as your user name on any site, and installing anti-virus software on all your computers! If you follow these few simple steps you’ll have no problem staying secure online.

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Adam is a partner in B2BNN with over 15 years experience in the enterprise technology field.