Security tips to stay safe online: accessing your accounts

Using the internet makes life so easy, it has become an integral part of most people’s lives. The more often we do something, however, the more complacent we become about how we do it – and this is dangerous in cyberspace.

The subject of online security is one we take very seriously at SuperControl. As such, our Security Administrator has the following advice to help you stay safe online.

As it’s such an important subject, there’s a lot to cover, so we’ve broken it down in to three separate articles. This first one is all about how and where you can safely access your accounts:

Logging on (and off)

  1. 1. Do not log in to bank accounts (or other important accounts) from publicly available computers (eg internet cafe etc).
  2. 2. When you want to log on to online banking, for instance, type “https://bank.com” instead of “bank.com”. This ensures you use an encrypted connection. In most cases, you will be redirected to a secure web page, but not always. Otherwise, during the first phase of the connection (when you typed bank.com) the attacker can intercept and redirect you to a phishing webpage.
  3. 3. After you’ve logged on, check your last logon date. If it does not match, change your password and security question immediately.
  4. 4. Do not open other web pages while you are logged into an important website.
  5. 5. Never write personal or other valuable data in websites if you’re not sure for what purpose such data is required.
  6. 6. When you’re finished, make sure you properly log off. If you just close the browser tab or close the browser, it may allow others to use pending sessions.

Learn more

Look out for the next two articles in our online security series. They’ll cover passwords and extra measures to secure your data.

If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments, below.