Cybersecurity and Your Financial Life: What to Watch for Before Year-End

Before holiday shopping, travel and year-end transactions pick up, spend a few minutes making your financial accounts harder to mess with.

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

And while “cybersecurity” may make you think about corporate data breaches and IT departments, there’s plenty worth paying attention to much closer to home.

Your bank account. Credit cards. Retirement plan. Payroll information. Payment apps. Email.

Think about how many of those you’ve accessed from your phone in the past week alone.

That access makes managing money remarkably easy. It also gives scammers plenty of ways to try to reach it.

Urgency should make you suspicious

A lot of scams want you to do something right now.

There’s a problem with your account. Your payment failed. Your password expires today. Your boss needs gift cards for a meeting. A family member is stranded somewhere and needs money.

Some attempts are laughably bad. Others can look almost exactly like a message you’d normally receive.

Slow down when a message asks you to click a link, provide account information or send money unexpectedly.

Instead, go directly to the company’s app or website. Call the person who supposedly contacted you. Use a phone number you already have or find independently.

If the request is legitimate, taking a few minutes to verify it won’t hurt.

Protect the account that connects everything else

Your email inbox contains a surprising amount of your financial life.

Receipts arrive there. So do account notifications, financial documents and password reset links. Someone who gets into your email may have an easier time getting into other accounts, too.

Use a strong password that you don’t use anywhere else and turn on multifactor authentication.

Do the same for accounts connected directly to your money, particularly banking, investment and retirement accounts.

If one password is currently doing a lot of heavy lifting across the internet, give it a break.

Know how payroll changes are handled

Your paycheck can also be a target.

In a payroll diversion scam, someone impersonates an employee and asks an employer to change the bank account used for direct deposit.

That makes verification important on both sides of the request.

Employees should be cautious about messages asking for payroll credentials or personal information. Employers should have a clear process for confirming direct-deposit changes before sending money somewhere new.

A request involving somebody’s paycheck deserves more than a quick reply to an email.

Keep an eye on your accounts

Fraud isn’t always obvious.

A small charge you don’t recognize can be just as important to investigate as a large one.

Account alerts can help. Many banks and credit card companies allow you to receive notifications for purchases, withdrawals, login attempts and other activity. Set the ones that are useful to you and pay attention when they appear.

It’s also worth reviewing your statements regularly rather than assuming you’ll notice if something goes wrong.

If you see activity you don’t recognize, contact the financial institution and secure the account.

Check a few things now

The end of the year tends to get busy. There’s holiday shopping, travel, charitable giving and a steady stream of emails and texts asking you to click, buy, donate, confirm and log in.

Before all of that ramps up, check the security around the accounts you use most.

Turn on multifactor authentication. Make sure transaction and login alerts are going somewhere you’ll actually see them. Install software updates on the devices you use to access financial accounts. Replace any passwords you’ve reused.

Then talk about scams with the people around you.

Knowing that your parent, spouse or child will call before responding to a strange request for money may turn out to be one of the most useful security measures you put in place.

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summary

Your financial information lives in more places than you may realize, from your email and bank accounts to payroll systems and payment apps. Taking a few basic security precautions now can help protect your money as financial activity picks up toward the end of the year.