Tips for Staying Smart Online

Stay-Smart-Online

Although Stay Smart Online Week is coming to a close (October 9–13), it is important to always consider online safety, and to make sure that the devices and software you and your students access are protected. The following information comes from the team at Stay Smart Online.


For most of us, the internet opens up new opportunities — we can shop, bank, research, work, and connect when and where we want to. But the online world can also give criminals opportunities to steal money, information and identities.

Stay Smart Online Week is a national awareness initiative that puts online security in the spotlight, and reminds us all to set aside some time to focus on the important but easy steps that we can take to stay safe online.

The theme for this year is simple steps to online safety, with a focus on five key areas: privacy of your personal information, strong passwords, software updates, backing up your important information, and avoiding online scams.

Thankfully, there are some easy things that we can all do to dramatically improve how we protect our personal and financial information online, and recover if things go wrong. Even small actions can make a huge difference.

Simple steps for individuals include:

Simple steps for schools include:

  • Keep software up-to-date on your computers, mobiles and tablets to protect your school and student information
  • Install anti-virus software on all of your devices and set the software to automatically check for updates on a daily basis
  • Creating strong passwords and passphrases, or use two-factor authentication (2FA) where possible
  • Regularly back-up your school data to a storage device (USB or external hard drive) or online (cloud) service
  • Putting an online security awareness program in place to keep you and your staff informed about good online security practices.

With cybercrime estimated to cost Australians more than $1 billion per year, and around 87% of us accessing the internet every day, it’s more important than ever that we take the time to learn about how to keep our information and assets safe when we’re online.

For more easy to follow tips, or to find out more about Stay Smart Online Week, visit: www.staysmartonline.gov.au


Stay Smart Online partner logoStay Smart Online
www.staysmartonline.gov.au
The Stay Smart Online program was first established in 2006. Today the program involves a community of more than 50,000 individuals and organisations, all committed to sharing online safety information.

Stay Smart Online provides topical, relevant and timely information on how home internet users and small businesses can protect themselves from, and reduce the risk of, cyber security threats such as software vulnerabilities, online scams, malicious activities, and risky online behaviours.

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