Over the years, the brightest brains have turned to technology and delivered incredible solutions to improve our daily lives. Meanwhile, the smartest criminals have also turned to technology to attempt identity theft, fraud and malicious scams on an exponentially increasing scale.

As a client of Citywide Financial Partners we want to ensure you are best protected from external threats to your information security. Below is some advice on how you can best secure your own information.

Your behaviour and privacy

· Only give contact details to respected sources and, where possible, ensure that these are not relayed on to any third parties.
· Verify the privacy settings on mobile devices and social media to ensure you are not over- sharing information with the world that could potentially be used against you.

Passwords and authentication

· Use a very strong, long and unique password for every website (a combination of upper and lower-case characters, numerical characters and special characters).
· Install and use a password management product to retain these passwords. We recommend using ‘LastPass’ or ‘Dashlane’.
· Refrain from using the same password twice on different platforms.

Software, applications and devices

· Avoid installing apps from untrustworthy vendors.
· Carefully follow all the notes throughout any installation wizard and avoid installing additional apps from untrustworthy download portals.
· Keep all applications up-to-date with the latest patches and use a less targeted browser such as Chrome or Firefox.
· Consider buying a low-cost Chromebook for everyday browsing and online banking.
· Toggle smartphone settings to ensure that apps log themselves out after a short idle time and pay careful attention to what permissions each app is requesting.

Internet and email browsing

· Only use trusted web pages.
· Refrain from clicking on embedded advertisements on any web page.
· Always authenticate the original sender of an email before opening it, or any attachments.

When it comes to data security, we are better off taking a cynical and sceptical approach to who we trust with access to our information. It truly is ‘better to be safe than sorry’, so be continuously aware concerning the ongoing threats you may be exposed to – especially online.