What steps can people take to safeguard their digital identities?
From utilizing MFA whenever possible to exploring passwordless options, we break down ways to safeguard digital identities.
Here are some top tips that anyone can take immediately to protect their identity and data:
- Passwords: Use unique passwords that are complex in nature, for every account you sign up for.
- Multi-Factor Authentication: Turn on MFA on every one of your accounts, especially where personal and financial data is stored. It’s hand-down the most accessible and secure way to stop cybercriminals. Turn it on by default. Don’t worry about the friction it causes, think of it as a must-have feature.
- Passwordless Authentication: If websites allow passwordless authentication for corporate, enable it!
- Don’t download unknown files: Unknown files that may seemingly look like legitimate attachments may end up installing spyware on your devices, capturing your keystrokes and therefore your usernames and passwords.
- Be on your toes: Give as little information as possible to any website or system that’s asking you for information. Sadly, that includes social media sites we love to use, like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and especially emerging apps like Tik Tok. Avoid giving personal information that can be used to break into your security questions or predict your location or behavior.
- Take advantage of consumer protection laws: I’m looking at Europe and my fellow Californians here! Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA laws are in effect to protect your data and to prevent it from being passed to third parties. Take advantage of this! Don’t willingly give consent to any website for them to use or share your data with third-party websites.
- Sign up for monitoring: If you can, sign up for credit monitoring services and real-time identity protection; they can many times warn you if someone is using your identity, information, or SSN.
his post originally appeared in a Quora Q&A session hosted in January 2020. Our CPO Archit Lohokare was asked to discuss the state of cybersecurity, Zero Trust, artificial technology and machine learning and working in the security field, among other things. Stay tuned as we share more of his answers in our blog!
To learn more about the future of digital identity, check out these thoughts from our CEO Danny Kibel in Forbes.
Archit Lohokare
Archit Lohokare is Chief Product Officer at Idaptive, where he is responsible for product strategy, driving innovation, and bringing new products and services to market. He transitioned over to Idaptive as it was spun-out from Centrify, where—as Vice President of Product Management—he led the Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) and Unified Endpoint Management product portfolio. Prior to Centrify, Archit was Vice President of Products at Optymyze, where he led the product management team responsible for the company’s Sales Performance Management and Sales Platform-as-a-Service SaaS and PaaS solutions, securing a Leadership position in the first Gartner Magic Quadrant report on Sales Performance Management along the way.
Earlier in his career, Archit led Symantec's Cloud Information Protection Security-as-a-Service offering, and IBM's Access Management product line, comprised of Web Access Management, Identity Federation, Enterprise Single Sign-On, and Risk-based Access and Entitlements Management products. Archit joined IBM through the acquisition of Encentuate, a leading Bay Area start-up in the security software space; as an early employee, he had the opportunity to contribute to its successful exit.
Archit has an MBA from UC Berkeley-Haas School of Business, and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from NTU, Singapore, where he was awarded the SIA-NOL undergraduate scholarship by the Ministry of Education, Singapore.
Archit is an avid history buff, enjoys reading in his spare time and running breathlessly after his one-year-old, hyperactive son.
CHAMELEON-LIKE SUPERPOWER
If Archit could have any Chameleon-like superpower, it would be the ability to change colors quickly and adapt. “Actually, it would be like the ability of our IAM solutions to adapt instantaneously to a customer’s environment and user behavior. Anomalous user access? A snap! Presto, change-o – like a chameleon from green to red in an instant, adapt to the change in user behavior and request user to assure their identities using multi-factor authentication...”