The Chan family sensed that something was amiss when their printer started printing out unfamiliar documents. “We had three computers connected to the printer via WiFi,” explained freelance writer and photographer Ms Chan Wai Peng. “Previously, without encryption, the printer would print out these documents which we believe belonged to our neighbours. It was so dangerous. Since then, we have made sure that we encrypt the WiFi connection in our home.”

Ensuring the security of wireless devices was one of four calls to action at this year’s Cyber Security Awareness Day, which took place on 24 July 2013. Individual users and organisations were also encouraged to secure their online identity, computers, mobile and wireless devices.

For online entrepreneur Ms Jenny Chan, an important measure to secure online identity is to have strong passwords. “I do not use passwords that others may easily guess at or that are based on personal data such as date of birth, email ID or phone numbers, and I have unique passwords for different online accounts,” she said.

Ms Chan also changes her passwords every three months or when she thinks her account may have been compromised. “As an online retailer, I have many bank transactions each week, so I check that I am always on ‘secure mode’ when I am at the banks’ websites,” she added.

An experience she had with a well-known trade portal a year ago further reinforced the need to be vigilant online. She had registered for a free user account as a vendor but the application was rejected and she had never had a chance to activate or access the account.

However, a few months after that, she received a call inquiring about the sale of calculators. She found out that someone had been posting advertisements of products using information from her “un-activated” account such as her name and contact number, but with email inquiries directed to the mysterious advertiser’s email address. She quickly alerted the portal administrator about the identity theft.

She is also extra careful about the personal particulars that she shares online. “Some websites have a very weak validation process against identity theft. Anyone who knows my email and date of birth, for example, can just get past the ‘verification process’ and misuse my account.”

Another call to action at this year’s Cyber Security Awareness Day was for people to secure their mobile devices. This is one area that sales administrator Ms Jeana Teo pays close attention to, as she makes frequent use of her mobile phone to check and respond to her customers’ emails and WhatsApp messages.

Ms Teo uses a strong password lock on her phone to prevent unauthorised access to data, and has installed an antivirus software to prevent malicious apps from being downloaded and installed onto her Android device.

She is also very careful about storing family contact details on her phone. “I input my father’s name instead of putting it as ‘dad’ in the mobile phone’s address book. This is in case when I lose my hand phone, someone could just message my father and he may disclose confidential information without suspicion, thinking that the message was from me.”

“If you receive such a message, make a call back to validate the caller,” she advised. “Similarly if I receive a message from my father asking me to go to a certain place, I will do the same validation by calling to check that it is really him.”

The fourth call to action was centred on computer security, which includes measures such as installing a firewall and antivirus software. Firewalls help screen information coming into and leaving the computer to ensure that there is no unauthorised access, while antivirus software helps prevent, detect and remove malware.

Automation engineer Mr Tham Jinhua makes sure the antivirus definitions, operating systems and other software on his computer are kept updated to prevent hackers from exploiting any vulnerabilities. He also makes backup copies of important data and photos to ensure that they will be available in the event of a hard disk failure or if the computer is corrupted.

“Most system administrators do their best to protect systems against intrusion or data loss, and we can trust them to ensure that the technical aspects of the systems are secure. On a personal level, we also need to ensure our login information is kept secret. This will help improve the overall level of computer security,” said Mr Tham.