Check Your Cybersecurity!

             October is National Cybersecurity Awareness month. But we don’t want to wait for a particular time to check how secure our systems and our habits are. That gives the criminals more opportunities.

          The scams are constantly changing, and that is especially true in our industry. It is very common for a criminal to send a phishing email or a text message to try and trick someone into giving up their personal information. They could send it to a taxpayer pretending to be the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), or to a Tax Professional pretending to be a potential client. Don’t click on strange links or download files from people you do not know! It could allow malware to be downloaded and from there passwords are stolen and computer networks are compromised. They might even hold the data for ransom.

          There are steps we could all take to keep ourselves secure. Don’t act too quickly to click on a link, even if it is from someone you know. That is what the scammers are counting on. Make sure that you use anti-virus software and that it is kept up to date. Keep your files encrypted and regularly back them up.

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