A data breach is when personal information is shared with or accessed by an unauthorized person, which can be by accident or due to malicious intent.

A person’s sensitive data holds great value to cybercriminals. Cybercriminals can use this data to:

• Sell the data to other criminals;

• Commit fraud through identity theft;

• Takeover online accounts;

• Target data owners with extortion.

In the scenario of a data breach, prevention is the best form of protection. Adopting the best practices outlined below greatly improve your security measures against a potential breach.

1. Employ strong authentication

Stolen credentials are one of the most common ways malicious actors commit data breaches, and this makes strong account authentication the first line of prevention against such an attack.

Strong authentication requires the use of strong and unique passwords, regular password change and the adoption of multi-factor authentication to make account access as secure as possible.

2. Monitor your online accounts

Stay alert to all activity on the online accounts you use, particularly online banking. Unexplained activity or transactions will tell you that someone may have illicit access, and has therefore committed a data breach.

3. Apply security patches as soon as possible

Software vulnerabilities are common and malicious actors use malware to exploit these vulnerabilities and gain personal data through a compromised device.

It is critical to apply security patches from your official vendor immediately, so that your devices are equipped with the most up-to-date security measures.

4. Encrypt sensitive documents with passwords

You can add an additional layer of security to the important files on your device by encrypting certain folders so that they are only password accessible.

• Windows

Navigate to the folder or file you want to encrypt. Right-click on the item, click Properties > Advanced. Check Encrypt contents to secure data. Click OK > Apply. Choose whether you want to encrypt only the file or its parent folder and all the files within that as well, select full-folder encryption to be safe.

• macOS

Go to the Finder > Applications > Utilities folder. Choose Disk Utility.  On the top of the menu, select File > New Image > Image from Folder.

Then choose the folder you wish to add a password and click Choose. On the next screen, choose 256-bit AES Encryption as this is a more secure encryption, once done click Choose.

Next, next to 'Image Format', select Read/Write. Select Save to exit the window. Once the system finishes encrypting the folder, click 'Done'.

As a general preventive measure, you should ensure you have backups of all your data outside your network. You can do this by backing up your data to a local storage device and on cloud storage.

If you ever suspect you have become the victim of a data breach, call us on our toll-free number 9009, or send an email to rwcsirt@ncsa.gov.rw.