No doubt you’ve read a lot about the recent discovery of an Internet security flaw that allowed personal information to be accessible to third parties. The security flaw, called Heartbleed, has been patched on many sites, but your action is now required to ensure complete security.
We spent a portion of our weekend burning the midnight oil here at TSS to ensure that our accounts were secure following this security breech discovery. Note that major websites, like Google, Gmail, Facebook and Yahoo! were affected, so you’ll want to change those passwords immediately.
We changed passwords in our system in order to ensure that your data is safe, and we’ll be digging through our systems to make further changes as well to ensure the security of our clients’ sensitive information. We encourage all of you to change your own personal passwords as well, to avoid getting hacked or compromising personal information.
It’s unclear at this point if identity thieves and hackers were even aware of this security flaw; it looks like the flaw went undetected even by those with negative intentions.
Tips to Ensure Account Security:
1) For all Google Accounts, create 2-step verification, requiring a PIN be entered that is texted to your cell phone. This ensures that no one else may access your account, even if they have the password.
2) Choose secure passwords. Go for 8-12 characters, and use numbers, upper- and lower-case letters, and special characters.
3) Don’t use anything obvious that someone can simply guess, like your birthday, your favorite TV show or a product you love. Make it as random looking as possible.
