Since 2004, the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress have declared the month of October to be National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM), a month focused on raising awareness about the importance of cybersecurity.

This NCSAM awareness campaign is a collaboration between the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) and the National Cyber Security Alliance, which is a non-profit organization on a mission to create a more secure, interconnected world. According to the National Cyber Security Alliance, NCSAM is “dedicated to creating resources and communications for organizations to talk to their employees and customers about staying safe online.”

Delta Community Credit Union has for years discussed personal cybersecurity in our blogs; in fact, our first blog post in 2010 was on the topic of preventing online identity theft. To support National Cybersecurity Awareness Month and provide helpful information to both Delta Community members and the public, following are 10 helpful tips—along with a few bonus tips—to help manage online security.

To assist with your personal cybersecurity this month, here are a few tips to remember, statuses to check and actions to take

1. If someone claiming to be from your credit union, bank or credit card provider calls, emails or texts you with an “account emergency” and urgently needs you to give them your online account access details, hang up right away and call the financial institution from its online number (or the number on the back of the credit card) and check to see if there’s a problem with your account(s).
2. Learn to recognize clues that you’re being scammed, whether by email, phone or texts.
3. Check all your current passwords, and then consider creating new, longer, more complex and stronger passwords (16 or more characters are recommended by some cybersecurity specialists) and think about using a password manager on your computers and internet-connected devices.
4. Turn on multi-factor authentication (also called two-factor authentication) for all of your online accounts that offer it.
5. Make the answers to your online account security check questions harder to guess.
6. Don’t respond at all to any spam emails or text messages; just delete them immediately.
7. Be suspicious if new, unknown people pop up on social media and want to become close friends—and then they tell you that they urgently need money for a very difficult personal situation and ask you to help them financially.
8. Be very, very careful about sending money electronically to anyone you've never met, don’t know and have no reason to trust. Consider if occasionally mailing a physical, paper check (that you or your credit union or bank can send) is a safer option, since the payment isn’t immediate, and a check can be canceled. Electronic payments to fraudsters often can’t be canceled, recovered or reimbursed by a financial services company.
9. Keep electronic devices up to date by installing any operating system software patches or updates for your computers and mobile devices such as cellphones and tablets. Also, update the firmware for your internet router so it has the current version. Software updates often have important fixes for errors and vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a hacker to harm or hijack your computer or mobile phone.
10. Be wary of being phished, smished or vished with fraudulent messages from scammers.
11. Bonus essential #11: Learn more about protecting your new computer from hackers.
12. Bonus essential #12: Become informed about protecting your mobile phone from malicious apps.1
13. Bonus essential #13: Consider an identity theft monitoring insurance policy. If cybersecurity is a serious concern, then it may be helpful to look at investing in an identity monitoring plan to help keep your personal and credit information safer. Delta Community Credit Union and its wholly owned subsidiary, Members Insurance Advisors, now offer members identity protection plans from PrivacyGuard.¹ All PrivacyGuard plans offer comprehensive tools such as credit monitoring, dark and public web monitoring of your personal information, activity alerts and access to fraud resolution experts.²

If you have concerns about the security of your Delta Community account, call us

If you think any of your Delta Community accounts have been compromised, immediately contact our Member Care Center via our toll-free number at 800-544-3328 with whatever details you have about a scam or hack, including dates, amounts of money, email messages, email addresses, text messages, phone numbers, website addresses and names.

Please remember that Delta Community will never call, text or email you to ask for your checking, savings or investment account, ATM, debit or credit card numbers or passwords, your telephone access (IVR) PIN or one-time passcode. If someone purporting to be from Delta Community calls and asks for any of this type of information, hang up immediately and call the Credit Union.

Would you like to know more about personal cybersecurity this month?

More information on protecting yourself, your network and your personal computing and communications devices is available from free, monthly Delta Community Financial Education Center webinars on many different money and security-related topics. Please visit the Financial Education Center's Events & Seminars page to register for its no-cost, on-demand webinars.

Delta Community’s blog and security posts have more detailed recommendations on handling online personal security:

• Do you know how to monitor tour financial accounts daily, monthly and annually to guard against fraud?
• Why you should always factor in multifactor authentication to help secure accounts.
• Have you read how scammers could use artificial intelligence to steal your money?
• How to take 9 steps that might help avoid email scams.
• Avoid fake check scams.
• Learn check-writing tips.
• How to hang up on imposter scams, part 1.
• How to hang up on imposter scams, part 2.
• You should know how to tell if someone’s stolen your identity and how to prevent it.
• Did you know that only scammers get paid with gift cards or cryptocurrency?
• Think for a minute, and then don’t click 'unsubscribe' from spam emails and texts—managing spam.
• Learn how to make your mobile and online payments safer.
• How to protect yourself online while working or learning from home.
• Why to question your security questions.
• How to secure your home network.
• How to get a stronger password and use a password manager.
• Be on the lookout for phishing, smishing and vishing attacks.
• Be vigilant for spoofed phone calls.
• Harden your email account against an attack.

¹The benefits in PrivacyGuard are provided by Trilegiant Corporation. 

²View important product benefit information and restrictions.