By The Advocates and Wes Stillman

In case you didn’t hear in last weeks news, Yahoo experienced a security breach associated with at least 500 million user accounts that were stolen from its network in 2014 by what it believed to be a state-sponsored actor, a theft that appeared to be the world’s biggest known cyber breach by far. 

The data stolen may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and hashed passwords (the vast majority with the relatively strong bcrypt algorithm) but may not have included unprotected passwords, payment card data or bank account information, the company said. For more details on the full story is a link to a Reuters article.  

How this affects you:

While you may not have a Yahoo email account yourself, many of your clients, friends and family do.  If so, then their company emails and more importantly, your company’s and personal email accounts, may be exposed to Phishing Attacks.   

What you need to do:

There are a few basic steps that you can take:

·         First and foremost, if you do have a Yahoo account, take the two minutes out of your day to immediately change your yahoo password.

·         Be on guard for any and all suspicious looking emails and use additional consideration before clicking on emails from what appears to be from clients, friends and family, especially those that may have a Yahoo email account.

·         Consider using a centrally-managed password manager solution or password vault. At The Advocates, we use and recommend this for both professional and personal email accounts. Last Pass has a free solution that will allow you to generate complex unique passwords for all your online activities. 

We’re here to help too:

Be assured that we are here to keep your personal information safe. We take that job very seriously and constantly update and reinforce the layers of protection we provide you.  But remember, even with the best of technology, cybersecurity is as much of a people problem as it is a technology issue. We urge you to continue to exercise online caution and common sense.   

 As always, feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or concerns.