Your password is often the single key someone needs to gain access to your confidential information. Many logins use your email address as the username, which means the password is only thing preventing other people from accessing your online accounts. If you're like most people, you use the same password for several different websites. Therefore, if someone finds out your password, they can quickly gain access to several of your personal accounts.
In today's society, where identity theft is as prevalent as ever, it is especially important to protect your login information. The best way to do this is to not share your password with anyone. Don't even hint at it with your friends and family members. While those close to you may not intentionally share your password with others, it can accidentally slip out in conversation. If you never talk about your password, it will be impossible for someone to overhear it.

If you are married, there may be some passwords that are important to share with your spouse. In this case, you should only share the necessary logins and make sure you both understand the importance of keeping each other's passwords confidential.
It's good to be open and honest in your relationships, but when it comes to computer security, the less people know about you, the better.

One of the most overlooked features on computers today is the built in ability to automatically update software. Keeping your operating system up-to-date is vital for a healthy computer in todays environment. Software manufactures are constantly fixing software bugs, updating driver for new devises, and making improvements on the software that you use everyday. While this may not sound like its that big of a deal - it is. Most of the time an up-to-date operating system will improve the reliability, security and speed of your computer greatly.

Phishing attacks are more rampant than ever before, rising by more than 162 percent from 2010 to 2014. They cost organizations around the globe $4.5 billion every year and over half of internet users get at least one phishing email per day.
The best defense companies have against phishing attacks is to block malicious emails before they reach customers with the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance) standard. Brands must also work with a vendor that can offer email threat intelligence data revealing attacks beyond DMARC (e.g., attacks that spoof their brand using domains outside of the company’s control).
Unfortunately, no matter what companies do, some phishing emails will always make it to the inbox. And those messages are extremely effective—97% of people around the globe cannot identify a sophisticated phishing email. That’s where customer education comes in.
Here are 10 tips on how to identify a phishing or spoofing email. Share them externally with your customers and internally with your company.

Tip 1: Don’t trust the display name
Tip 2: Look but don’t click
Tip 3: Check for spelling mistakes
Tip 4: Analyze the salutation
Tip 5: Don’t give up personal information
Tip 6: Beware of urgent or threatening language in the subject line
Tip 7: Review the signature
Tip 8: Don’t click on attachments
Tip 9: Don’t trust the header from email address
Tip 10: Don’t believe everything you see

Phishing is popular with cybercriminals, as it is far easier to trick someone into clicking a malicious link in a seemingly legitimate email than trying to break through a computer’s defenses. Although some phishing emails are poorly written and clearly fake, sophisticated cybercriminals employ the techniques of professional marketers to identify the most effective types of messages -- the phishing "hooks" that get the highest "open" or click through rate and the Facebook posts that generate the most likes. Phishing campaigns are often built around the year's major events, holidays and anniversaries, or take advantage of breaking news stories, both true and fictitious.

To make phishing messages look like they are genuinely from a well-known company, they include logos and other identifying information taken directly from that company’s website. The malicious links within the body of the message are designed to make it appear that they go to the spoofed organization. The use of subdomains and misspelled URLs (typosquatting) are common tricks, as is homograph spoofing -- URLs created using different logical characters to read exactly like a trusted domain. Some phishing scams use JavaScript to place a picture of a legitimate URL over a browser’s address bar. The URL revealed by hovering over an embedded link can also be changed by using JavaScript.