College is a fun and care-free time for teens and young adults across the country. With acceptances having just gone out recently and high school graduation just around the corner, many of you will be heading to campus next fall ready to take on four great years (or more, or less!). But going off to college comes with its risks as well. One risk that many college students aren’t fully prepared for on campus is cybersecurity threats, which can be a big problem. Here are three cybersecurity tips to follow in college to keep your digital info safe and secure.
Keep Your Information Secure
The first cybersecurity tip that you should follow in college is to keep your information secure. While this may seem pretty basic and straightforward, you might be shocked how many teens go through life without strong passwords to protect their devices and accounts. Make sure that you are taking the proper steps to make secure passwords and keeping them safe from unwanted eyes. You should avoid saving your payment information to websites that you don’t trust, and make sure that you are putting password protections on every account you have that has sensitive information on it.
Be Careful on Public Wi-Fi
The next cybersecurity that college students have to follow is to be careful on public wi-fi. When you are logged into a public WIFI network, like the one at many colleges, coffee shops, libraries. you are vulnerable to threats. Free Wi-Fi comes at the cost of higher cybersecurity risks. The easiest way to protect yourself on public Wi-Fi is by using a VPN, or virtual private network. A VPN encrypts your WIFI connection, hiding the IP address of your computer and making it more difficult for hackers to locate you and steal your information.
Update Your Software
The final tip that you should follow to increase your cybersecurity in college is to update your software frequently. Software patches and updates can be issued for many reasons, but among the most common reasons are to bolster security. Overtime, as a program or software is available, hackers have more time to find weak points to enter. Software developers then find these loopholes and close them with the updates to keep you safe. Without updating, you aren’t closing off the entry routes to hackers.
Cybersecurity is crucial for your life, and there is no better time to start than now. Many college students arrive on campus woefully unprepared for cybersecurity issues present on campus. Follow these three tips to keep your online info safe all semester long.
Check out this article on tips for keeping your identity safe online!