Cyber-Safety over the Holidays

In 2023, consumers worldwide lost over $1 trillion to scams with wide-ranging economic and emotional consequences. Despite significant efforts dedicated to combatting scam-based cybercrime, many continue to fall victim to ever-evolving threats.

Okta’s market-leading Identity solutions continually evolve as mission-critical security infrastructure to combat Identity-based attacks. Over a 30-day period, Okta has blocked over 3 billion attacks including credential stuffing and malicious bots, securing nearly 20,000 customers globally. We invite you to learn more about our long-term initiative to lead the industry in the fight against Identity attacks.

Check out our Security Culture team’s cyber-safety checklist to help keep your digital Identity safe this holiday season.

Cyber-Safety Checklist

At Okta, we believe in sharing valuable, actionable security insights because we Love our Customers. As the holiday season approaches and scams continue to emerge, here are five easy tips from Okta’s Security Culture team to help keep you, your data, and your devices safe and secure.

1. Monitor your accounts

Catching suspicious or fraudulent charges early gives you a greater chance of restoring lost funds, preventing further compromise and also halting unauthorized spending.

Check your bank accounts and credit cards regularly to validate intentional transactions and their totals. Most providers allow you to set up alerts and/or multi-factor authentication (MFA) for additional protection. In practicing good credit hygiene, you should also consider:

• Requesting a (usually free) copy of your credit report.

• Signing up to a credit monitoring service.

2. Check your tech

Vulnerabilities in both outdated software applications and operating systems are more likely to be exploited by threat actors in order to gain unauthorized access to your accounts.

We recommend always using up-to-date devices, especially when performing financial transactions such as online banking or making credit card purchases. Some devices and/or applications allow you to turn on automatic updates to avoid having to manually check for software updates in the future.

3. Click carefully

Social media ads, emails and text messages can take you to fake websites that look like the real thing. To stay safe, always type the official website URL directly into your browser instead of clicking on links. Phishing and smishing are getting increasingly sophisticated and can be hard to tell apart from messages from trusted sources.

Staying cyber-safe means staying updated; numerous organizations and retailers publish best practices they recommend for leveraging their products, services or tools.

4. Shop smart

When taking advantage of holiday deals, make sure your credit card information gets securely encrypted.

A good start could be to check the webpage URL, ensuring that it begins with HTTPS (and not HTTP) before you checkout and enter your sensitive data. It’s good practice to use reputable sites and create an account, enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) to authenticate for future purchases. In general, it’s a best practice to not have sites save your credit card information, and when able using session-based payments (such as Apple Pay) can provide additional security.

5. Protect your accounts

Instead of traditional passwords, we recommend the use of passphrases for additional assurance. An eight-character password can be quickly cracked by a threat actor; a strong 12-character passphrase could take years. Also, consider using a password manager (such as Okta Personal) to safely and securely store your account credentials.

It is best practice to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever possible. Given 81% of breaches involve stolen or weak credentials, use a passkey where available. Passkeys are proven to be significantly stronger than standard passwords. We recommend using biometrics such as FaceID or Fingerprint to log in and authenticate to your commonly used sites and services.

A Culture of Cybersecurity

Today’s digital world has evolved tremendously in enabling our online reach, which in turn can expand the potential for impact. Being vigilant to online scams shouldn’t just be a priority over the holiday season. Here at Okta, we promote a culture of cybersecurity all-year-round and recommend building routine habits around our recommendations.

Okta’s Always Secure, Always On corporate value reflects our ongoing commitment to make every employee an owner of security. With 68% of breaches involving a human element, a strong security culture is more important than ever. Okta’s culture of cybersecurity is a core value; learn more about our foundational pillars and how we foster our security culture.