Foster Area

Cyber Security with Gray Dog Digital

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Allen Rowand of Gray Dog Digital tells the audience about cyber security basics
Allen Rowand, Vice-President of the Foster Area Business Association and owner of Gray Dog Digital gave a talk on Cyber Security Basics at the Portland Mercado on May 9. In addition to the in-person audience, more than 70 people checked in live on Facebook to follow the highlights of the talk.

Watch this page for a link to the full video and audio from Allen. In the mean-time, here are some main points to implement in your cyber security plan”

On Passwords:

  • Your password should be 8 or more characters with uppercase and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols.
  • Use a different password for every site. Get a password manager like LastPass, Keepass, or others to help you
  • Whenever possible, use two-factor authentication

Two factor authentication:

    1. Something you know (password)
    2. Something you have/are (smartphone/fingerprint)

On Software:

  • Do regular updates to keep your security strong
  • Buy software that will let you do remote deletes in case hardware is stolen
  • Never install anything via a random notification
  • Remove any software you don’t need

Gray Dog Digital on Backups:

  • Backup, backup, backup!
  • Always keep backups in at least 2 locations and at least 3 different formats
  • CrashPlan, Carbonite online are easy to use, but it takes days to restore
  • Crashplan will let you backup to another computer on the system, this is the fastest to restore

On Employees:

  • Give everyone that works with you their own logins and passwords
  • Different employees have different levels of access to your data and systems in accordance with their responsibilities
  • This makes it easy to protect your data if one person is compromised, or the relationship ends
  • If you experience a theft the employee log-in that was used can help with the investigation

Go to https://graydogdigital.com/ for more information.