How to Prevent Cyber Crime? Protect Yourself

Last Updated on 3 weeks by Touhid

In the cyber world, we should know how to prevent cyber crime to protect our computer systems. Cybercrime is criminal activities that involve a computer and network to generate profit and it is one of the profitable ways to make money online. In this post, we will put the best tips that can help to prevent cybercrime.

How To Prevent Cyber Crime? Best Tips

If you are aware of cybercrime, and how you can be a victim of cybercrime, then it is easy for you to protect against cyber-attacks. There are some practical things you should consider, and it is assured that can help you prevent cybercrime.

However, here are the best tips on how to prevent cybercrime:

• Use strong password.
• Enter information on the secure website.
• Use antivirus software.
• Delete suspicious email.
• Use a firewall on your network.
• Use data encryption.
• Keep your browser up to date.
• Up to date operating system.
• Use a web application firewall.
• Secure your social media account.
• Secure your wireless network.

Use Strong Password

This is the first tip to use a strong password, that can help to prevent cyber crime. It is a pervasive case that we use easy and simple passwords to remember our memory. For example, DOB, mobile no, and employee id, which is one of the top reasons for cybercrime.

So, make the passwords strong by combining letters, numbers, and special characters to prevent cyber crime and change the password on a regular basis.

In addition, Cyber security experts recommend that you should use strong and unique passwords for each account. If you re-use a password for multiple accounts and if attackers get access to your one account, then all other accounts (such as a bank, and social media) will be vulnerable.

If you want to keep your personal information safe, then it’s important to have a separate password for each online account to prevent cybercrime.

Enter Information on the Secure Website

How to prevent cybercrime on a website? If you want to prevent cybercrime on a website, then never share or submit your personal and financial information on unsecured websites.

However, if you enter your sensitive information on an untrusted website then the attackers may collect your information for illegal activities.

So, when you’re going to enter your sensitive or financial information on a site, first you have to ensure that the site is secure by SSL certificate. In URL, it will start with https:// such as https://www.google.com.

Use Antivirus Software

We know that antivirus software is a program that helps to protect your computer, mobile, and server against viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other unwanted threats. It scans every file that comes through online to your devices and helps to prevent cybercrime.

Whenever you’re going to download a file or email attachments from the internet, the file may have malware or viruses and can impact your business.

To protect from cyber-attacks, you have to install antivirus software that helps to protect malware, viruses, worms, and Trojan horses.

It is recommended, you should use professional anti-virus software in order to prevent cybercrime. Here is the list of the best professional anti-virus software.

• Norton
• Bitdefender
• Kaspersky
• Panda
• ESET
• Avast
• AVG

Delete Suspicious Email

Delete phishing or suspicious emails is another best practice to prevent cyber-attacks. If the email raises confusion and seems to be suspicious then you can direct a phone call to the sender to ensure that he sends the mail.

In addition, you can simply delete the phishing email, can mark it as spam, or as suspicious. A suspicious email may have contained viruses and malware to hack your system. So, it is better never to click on that type of phishing email.

Use Firewall on Your Network

How to protect cybercrime from attackers on your network? If you’re serious to protect your network from attackers, you should use a firewall on your network.

A firewall is a network security tool that is designed to monitor incoming and outgoing network traffic and permits or blocks data packets based on security rules.

The main purpose of using a firewall on your network is to create an obstacle between a trusted internal network and an untrusted external network in order to block malicious attacks.

This tool is very important for a network because it blocks the harmful traffic of your network and acts as a security tool to prevent cybercrime.

Use Data Encryption

Encryption technology is another important tip to prevent cybercrime. This method will protect your sensitive data such as financial information and login credentials by encoding into unreadable cipher text (The encrypted information is called cipher text).

If your organization has sensitive and financial data, then encrypt the information before sending it to the receiver. It is a technique; the information will be encoded in such a way that only authorized users can access it.

It will protect your information from being hacked or compromised which means prevent cyber crime. Typically, the main purpose of encryption techniques is to keep the confidentiality of the data that you have sent and received.

If your plain text data is not encrypted into cipher text, then your data may be compromised by unauthorized users or cyber attackers. So, you should use encryption techniques in your database to prevent cybercrime.

Keep Your Browser Up to Date

To ensure the security of your web pages, you must keep up to date your web browser. It is observed, out of date or older version web browsers can have serious cyber security problems such as phishing, viruses, Trojans, spyware, adware, and other sorts of malware.

However, security patches are released for popular browsers all the time. It requires a couple of minutes to update, just download and install it. So, to protect against security threats or cybercrime you must keep up to date your web browser.

Up To Date Operating System

This tips also be helpful to prevent cyber-crime. The operating system and security patch of your computer has security features that can help you to protect from cyber threats such as phishing attacks.

So, keep up to date your operating system and security patch to ensure the strongest security. Here are the tips on how to up to date your operating system.

• Start button –> Control panel –> system and security –> clicking Windows Update.
• In the left pane, click Check for updates, and wait while Windows looks for the latest updates.
• If any updates are found, click Install updates.

Use Web Application Firewall

How to prevent cybercrime of a web application? You can add a web application firewall (WAF)  in your data center to protect your application or website. A web application firewall is an application-based security tool that is designed to protect applications, websites, and software by filtering and monitoring HTTP harmful traffic.

WAFs are a key component and the best cyber security tool for enterprise security. Here is the list of some commercially used Web Application Firewalls are as follows:

• Fortinet FortiWeb
• Citrix NetScaler App Firewall
• F5 Advanced WAF
• Radware AppWall
• Symantec WAF
• Barracuda WAF
• Imperva WAF
• Sophos XG Firewall
• SonicWall NSa

Secure Your Social-Media Account

You have to make ensure that your social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are secure from cyber-attacks. Here are the best ways to protect your social media accounts that can prevent cybercrime.

• Create strong password.
• Change password regularly.
• Don’t click suspicious URL.
• Log out of social media accounts.
• Accept friend requests selectively.
• Don’t use auto login feature.
• Close old social media accounts.
• Enable two-factor authentication on your accounts.
• Use a separate email address for social activities.
• Add your phone number as a recovery option.

Secure Your Wireless Network

Wi-Fi or wireless networks at home or office are vulnerable to intrusion. Here are some simple but important tips to improve the security of your network to protect from cybercrime.

• Change the default admin login.
• Hide your network name.
• Provide a separate network for guests.
• Use stronger encryption.
• Use a secure WPA password.
• Change the password frequently.
• Enable the router firewall.
• Keep the router firmware updated.
• Use a virtual private network (VPN)

FAQs

What is the biggest cybercrime in cyber world?

There are different types of cyber crime in the cyber world, but Phishing is one of the biggest cybercrime. Most of the victim’s attacked by the phishing attack, as a percentage it can be over 70% more than other cyber-attacks.

Who is the prime target of cybercrime?

The internet users who age is over of 65 years, and who has poor knowledge about technology. By the by, bank and financial organizations are the main target of cybercrime.

What are the reasons of cyber crime?

The main reasons of cyber attackers are to earn money doing illegal activities. That’s why they are looking for financial data, sensitive information, login credentials, customer information, and credit card details.

Is it important to prevent cybercrime?

Yes, it is important to prevent cybercrime. If you compromised or your sensitive information is hacked anyway, you are unable to access your system. In addition, they can destroy your sensitive data, disable the devices, or can generate profit. So, it is very crucial to protect our businesses and individuals from cyber criminals.

Conclusion

Cyber security is very important for individuals or organization to ensure security of our computer system. In this post, we have suggested some tips on how to prevent cyber crime from cyber attackers. Hope the article will be helpful for you to protect your information and assets from cyber-attacks.