Healthy habits for better cybersecurity

The internet is full of articles about a healthy diet, lifestyle, sport tutorials and so on. But let’s be honest, how much time you spend sporting or in front of a screen of any kind? Since we manage an exchange service and health equals security to us, we’d like to say a few words about that in general.

One of the last released articles was about how to secure your Coinmate account, but now we’d like to introduce some of the general basics of the internet security, just to make this environment safer and your good night's sleep potentially better.

Good password is the key
… to your account, but also to keeping it safe. As mentioned in the last article, strong password is at least 8 characters long and contains both lowercase and uppercase characters, numbers, and special symbols like comas etc. But it is even better to use a password generator. These can be found online, or downloaded. These are programs generating the passphrases randomly, at any desired length, with selected types of characters. Since we tend to create passwords containing existing words, or any other familiar structures, our human passwords are much more vulnerable. Putting the job in machines hands gives you password much safer.

Your browser is not a safe
There were times, when even computer chassis had physical locks to protect unauthorized people from turning them on. Nowadays, we have system login passwords, screen locks, fingerprint sensors and many more. These all work nice, but be aware that third person can get to your open and unlocked computer or phone either physically or online. In that case, your browser could be the Achilles’ heel of your cybersecurity. We often save our passwords there, but keep them unprotected. It is recommended to set-up a master password, so you’d be prompted to authorize the automatic login and password fill when starting the browser or locked website.

Storing your passwords
Yes, your browser is not the best place to store keys to your financial management online, but who would want to remember long strings of random characters or write them down to lose them along with the grocery list on a Sunday walk in the park. The best way is to install a good password manager. That is a program storing your passwords in a heavily encrypted database, eventually accessible only with a key file, which can be stored outside of your physical computer memory. There, you can use just one master password that you have to remember, and all your confidential information, logins and passwords can be safely stored away.

As always, we hope this was enjoyable and helped you to secure your online life better. Stay tuned for more.
Your Coinmate team