Journalists can be at risk of hacking because of their prominent online presence. There are many ways this can happen: clicking on random emails, using multiple devices and logging into them and by stolen passwords.
The most common way accounts can be hacked is through taking control of a computer system, also known as hijacking. David Huerta, senior digital security trainer at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, shared a study by Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report that revealed 86% of website breaches were caused by account hijacking with stolen credentials.
“You have usernames and passwords, and the goal is creating unique, long and random passwords for every single thing you log into. The reality is our brains did not evolve for that,” said Huerta.
Password managers are the first step to take when it comes to online safety, Huerta explained. These tools allow you to organize passwords in a way that each person on the team will have secure access to passwords they need.
Using long passwords is a good practice to help prevent hijacking, per Huerta Additionally, if a person speaks multiple languages, they can create “passphrases” by combining words in different languages, which significantly reduces the chances of being hacked.
“You get a dictionary and then create some combinations,” Huerta said.
To protect electronic devices from having information extracted, they must be encrypted, he said. On their devices, journalists can have photos, videos and information that may be confidential, and if the data fall in the wrong hands, it can be stolen. Once encrypted, no one will have access to the data on your devices.
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