Be savvy with your accounts and identity.

Learn how you can enhance your security with these helpful tips.

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Lock Down Your Data

From check fraud to passwords, learn what you need to do to stay a step ahead of threats.

3 Steps to Creating a Strong and Unique Password In today’s world, passwords have become an important part of our daily lives. We use them for everything from social media accounts to digital banking, and endless apps in between. Although it is easy to choose the same short and memorable passphrase for everything, it can leave you wide open for risk if one of those platforms is compromised. Step One: Change It Up The first step to protecting yourself from data breaches is defining secure phrases for your different accounts in order to alleviate risk. The consider the following tips to remember when selecting a password: Make sure your password is at least 12 characters Include upper-case and lower-case letters throughout Avoid keyboard paths like 45678 or asdfg Add punctuation marks within the password not just at the end Step Two: Make it Meaningful While there is strength in a lengthy password, trying to remember an array of random letters, symbols, and numbers such as YP&3U6?@DM2$ may be difficult; therefore, it is beneficial to use phrases meaningful to you, but ambiguous to others. Instead of using easily predictable passwords containing information shared online such as birthdays, anniversaries, or family names, try relating it to your favorite hobby, food, or movie in order to better protect yourself. For example, creating a password that combines your favorite movie and the last 4 digits of your best friend’s phone number like PreTTyWoM@N2849! ensures that cybercriminals cannot effortlessly hack your account. Here is a chart designed to help you better understand how easily a cybercriminal can guess your password and the time it would take for you to be hacked. Step Three: Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe The more complex your passwords, the easier it is to forget a character and get locked out. So, what’s the best solution to keep everything straight and safe? Online: Storing passphrases on your phone or computer or sending them through email or text often seems like a convenient hassle-free solution, but it creates the opportunity for hackers to obtain private information. Offline: Writing down your passwords can be the safest way to store your information, but it is still crucial to not record them word for word. Sadly, fraud often times comes from internal sources 4 min read

Fraud Protection: 5 Reminders to Avoid Smishing and Vishing Scams Use these five helpful reminders to stay safe: Stay on alert for suspicious SMS text messages stating payments have been made using your account or Zelle information. These types of messages are called smishing. Phishers send a text, supposedly from your financial institution, asking you to confirm transactions made from your account by responding with a simple “Yes” or “No”, prompting a possible phone call from them immediately after. Do not respond to these types of messages. Instead, call your financial institution directly to confirm they have sent you a message about your account or to make sure there are no actual unknown transactions. When calling your financial institution, always call the number from the institution’s website or the number found on the back of your debit/credit card. If you feel you have been a victim of an SMS text messaging scam, call your financial institution for immediate assistance. Find more on smishing, voice phishing, and Zelle fraud explained by Brian Krebs, author of Krebs on Security, using the links below: SMS About Bank Fraud as a Pretext for Voice Phishing – Krebs on Security The ‘Zelle Fraud’ Scam: How it Works, How to Fight Back – Krebs on Security Need extra information on how to protect yourself and your information? Check out our free online course on Identity Protection. Identity Protection – First Bank 2 min read

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Learn the Cybercrime Warning Signs The number of cybercrimes continues to increase day by day. This can sometimes make it hard for you to completely protect yourself from these threats. But the more you know about these scams, the better chance you’ll have at identifying and avoiding them. What is a cybercrime? Cybercriminals aim to exploit your information for their own personal gain, causing harm to financial stability and exposing secure information. Cybercrimes are those criminal activities where a computer or the internet is used as a tool for fraudulent claims, to gain personal or business information, or to infect networks and devices. *First Bank will always take the appropriate measures to keep your personal information safe. In this article, we have outlined some common cyber scams, so that you can understand what to look out for. Some common scams/fraud includes: Phishing Email Scams Perhaps the most common type of scam is phishing, usually done via email and designed to look like they are coming from someone at your company, someone you know, or a notable figure. Because these emails look like they can come from anyone, it is easy to be caught in this form of scam. It may be hard to fully protect yourself from them, but it is always best to double check who is requesting your information. Payroll Scams In Protecting Against Fraud from Nacha, a payroll scam is when, “fraudsters target individual employees by directing the employees to update or confirm their payroll information via a fake payroll platform that spoofs their employer’s actual payroll platform. In some cases, the fraudster may claim the employee must do one of these: view a confidential email from human resources or the payroll department, view changes to the employee’s account, or confirm that the account should not be deleted.” Cybercriminals will use the stolen credentials to change payment information within the business’s payment platform. This type of scam can be extremely dangerous to an individual and a company because it exposes both user and business information. Romance Scams According to fbi.gov, romance scams, or online dating scams, “occur when a criminal adopts a fake online identity to gain a victim’s affection and trust. The scammer then uses the illusion of a romantic or 7 min read

Learn How to Be A Phishing Attack Detective With a number of people relying heavily on online services and communication for work and personal life, cybercriminals have increased their volume of attempts to acquire personal information. One of the most common ways they may try to gain access to this secure information is through phishing attacks. This causes problems for both individuals and companies when they are trying to keep information safe. What is phishing? As described by phishing.org, “Phishing is a cybercrime in which a target or targets are contacted by email, telephone or text message by someone posing as a legitimate institution to lure individuals into providing sensitive data such as personally identifiable information, banking and credit card details, and passwords. The information is then used to access important accounts and can result in identity theft and financial loss.” These attempts may look like someone posing as a coworker, asking for input, including links or attachments, among other things. Scammers attempt to gain access to user information every day, but when you know what to look for you don’t have to become a victim. Take a look at our playlist for a few tips to help you become a phishing email detective and use them in your everyday life. It is always a good idea to double check information before opening anything from unknown senders. In episode 1, you see Gil Ubble attempting to open an email from an external source. Upon further investigation, the domain name does not match and the email is not from someone at the company. Often times people are caught in these attacks because they aren’t paying close enough attention to who the email came from. If the email in question looks similar to something that provider would send, do not click on links or attachments. Instead, go directly to that company site or give them a call to make sure the information is accurate. If the email comes from someone who seems to work at your company, but you do not know the person, check to see if they actually work there. Even if the person’s email shows that they work at your company, check the email for other signs of false information. Scammers may go to extra lengths to spoof email addresses 4 min read

Lock It Up: Protect Your Login Info These days an increasing number of people are online creating accounts for shopping, streaming services, or to stay connected with other people. Of course, with all those accounts on various websites, who wants to create a different username and password every time? Well, it turns out the extra effort is worth it. Having different logins for your online shopping or subscription accounts can reduce your risk of fraud. Here’s why: if you use the same username and password across multiple sites and one of them is compromised, access to the other sites is automatically at risk. Fraudsters will then use the stolen credentials on those other sites to see if they can gain access and attempt various forms of fraud or other data mining activity. Please note: First Bank has several protective measures in place to ensure that your information is secure and that your account is safe from this type of fraud. But your other online accounts may not be so well guarded. Here are some tips to help you make each of your log-ins stronger and more secure: Use different login information. Not surprisingly, this is the best thing you can do to keep fraudsters out of your retail or subscription accounts. This means you will need to resist using your favorite username or password over and over again because it is the easiest to remember. Create strong/unique usernames and passwords. When using different usernames and passwords, use information that is not easily identifiable, but something you can remember. The more complex, the less likely it is to be guessed. One more tip: use numbers, capital letters, and special characters throughout your username or password, not just at the beginning or end. Enable two-factor/multi-factor authentication where available. By enabling this feature, a user is provided a second form of identification to verify a log in attempt. Think of it as a second layer of protection against potential attackers. This can be as simple as receiving a code via text or email, or clicking a link to confirm a log in from an unfamiliar device. Keep second factor information confidential. Never give out your second factor code to anyone – even if they say they are from a favorite 3 min read

New to Working From Home? Here’s How to Do It Safely To help mitigate the threat of COVID-19, businesses and employees are finding themselves taking part in the biggest “work from home” experiment ever tried. If you are one of those business owners or employees, here are some security tips to help protect you and your data while you work in your home office. 3 min read

Have You Heard of Smishing? It Sounds Ridiculous, But It’s a Real Threat Over the past year, there has been a huge increase in scammers using text messages to pose as banking institutions alerting you to possible fraud. This has been a wide-spread issue that has affected the banking industry, but we wanted to address it directly to make sure you have the tips and resources you need to stay safe. 4 min read

Why Having the Latest is the Greatest: Update Your Browser Today We’ve got a secret weapon in the fight against the fraudsters who are trying to steal the data off your computer or mobile phone: having an up-to-date web browser. 2 min read

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Financial Caregiving Learn what you should know about handling another person’s finances.

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Defeat The Fraudsters: Protect Yourself Against Account Fraud

Stay a step ahead of online fraud to prevent disruptions to your business.

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No-cost Information Security Tips For Businesses

Implement these three easy measures to ward off cyberattacks.

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Be savvy with your accounts and identity.

Lock Down Your Data

Protect Your Identity And Your Loved Ones

Fortify Your Business From Theft

We’re Here When You Need Us

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