Your Guide to Warding Off Cybercriminals: 7 Top Tips To Keep Your Data Safe Right Now

Despite significant advancements in security and data protection, hackers and cyber criminals linger around to pounce on open vulnerabilities.

A stray password scribbled on paper or free-for-all public computer are any hacker's playground and too often people make the mistake of letting their 'data' guard down. The results are far from pretty.

With more and more of our world online, we all hold accounts and passwords across a variety of sites and platforms; while our paperless transition certainly streamlines business processes, we need to be cognizant where and how we're fanning out our data in the digital world.

While the best companies and systems, like DocuSign, have your back with bank-class and carrier grade security, you still need to take proactive steps to ensure that everything is locked down on your end.

Given the frequency of the recent hacks and attacks, please keep a note of the following tips and tricks that will keep you safe:

• Keep operating systems and application patches up-to-date
• Install a trusted anti-malware suite and configure automatic updates
• Use different passwords for each website, online service and platform – Do not write these down in an insecure location
• Don't click on links in emails from untrusted senders

• Don't use public or untrusted computers for checking sensitive sites, such as your bank account, or inputting sensitive information, like your social security or credit card number
• Some sites may appear similar to trusted sites, so make sure to verify the correct URL before entering passwords or sensitive data
• Always enable multifactor authentication when available (e.g. text message to log in)

DocuSign customers and users trust our global network for their most important and sensitive transactions. It's our job to ensure you information, documents and data are ironclad secure within our systems. And we're committed to setting you up with the knowledge and resources to keep your data where it belongs: safe and secure away from hackers and thieves.

For more information, please reference these websites:

• https://www.us-cert.gov
• http://www.cert.org
• http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/cert
• http://www.apcert.org

As always, I'm here to answer any questions regarding the security of your information, documents and data. Please don't hesitate to leave a comment below or connect with me on Twitter @tompageler.

To view the original article, visit the DocuSign blog.