Keeping your Microsoft Account more secure against attacks

Security is an ever changing target.

As technologies improve to help us maintain a higher level of security new methods are being developed to take advantage of those new processes.

Expecting our security posture to be strong as we stand still when it comes to that security is a self defeating effort.

Take our Microsoft Accounts as an example. Microsoft already monitors those accounts, which provide the core connectivity to everything we do and access with Microsoft, to make you aware if any attempts are made to access your account.

In the past we never knew if these were sophisticated attacks or just random but Microsoft has now decided to let us know if they determine these attacks are coming from hackers who are working for a nation state.

We’re taking this additional step of specifically letting you know if we have evidence that the attacker may be “state-sponsored” because it is likely that the attack could be more sophisticated or more sustained than attacks from cybercriminals and others. These notifications do not mean that Microsoft’s own systems have in any way been compromised.

According to Microsoft, this does not mean they will give is details on who is targeting our accounts however, by letting us know it is a more sophisticated type of attack, we can then take additional steps to protect our Microsoft Account and computer systems.

Microsoft recommends the following actions to help increase the security of your accounts and computers:

Of course, one other element of protecting yourself and your systems is smart computing habits. Engaging the gray matter between your mouse finger and brain is critical and, in my opinion, the most important aspect of security because even the most vigilant of us can still be caught off guard.

There is no reason to make it easy for the bad guys by making poor choices when we are using our computers because that will only open up the opportunities for our security to be broken.

What steps do you take to increase your own personal computing security?

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.