What steps can people take to safeguard their digital identities?

Here are some top tips that anyone can take immediately to protect their identity and data:

1. Passwords: Use unique passwords that are complex in nature, for every account you sign up for.
2. Multi-Factor Authentication: Turn on MFA on every one of your accounts, especially where personal and financial data is stored. It’s hand-down the most accessible and secure way to stop cybercriminals. Turn it on by default. Don’t worry about the friction it causes, think of it as a must-have feature.
3. Passwordless Authentication: If websites allow passwordless authentication for corporate, enable it!
4. Don’t download unknown files: Unknown files that may seemingly look like legitimate attachments may end up installing spyware on your devices, capturing your keystrokes and therefore your usernames and passwords.
5. Be on your toes: Give as little information as possible to any website or system that’s asking you for information. Sadly, that includes social media sites we love to use, like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and especially emerging apps like Tik Tok. Avoid giving personal information that can be used to break into your security questions or predict your location or behavior.
6. Take advantage of consumer protection laws: I’m looking at Europe and my fellow Californians here! Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA laws are in effect to protect your data and to prevent it from being passed to third parties. Take advantage of this! Don’t willingly give consent to any website for them to use or share your data with third-party websites.
7. Sign up for monitoring: If you can, sign up for credit monitoring services and real-time identity protection; they can many times warn you if someone is using your identity, information, or SSN.

his post originally appeared in a Quora Q&A session hosted in January 2020. Our CPO Archit Lohokare was asked to discuss the state of cybersecurity, Zero Trust, artificial technology and machine learning and working in the security field, among other things. Stay tuned as we share more of his answers in our blog!

To learn more about the future of digital identity, check out these thoughts from our CEO Danny Kibel in Forbes.