{"id":26007,"date":"2023-05-26T12:10:28","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T11:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/personal-threat-landscape\/26007\/"},"modified":"2023-05-26T12:10:28","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T11:10:28","slug":"personal-threat-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/personal-threat-landscape\/26007\/","title":{"rendered":"Know your personal threat landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you try to protect yourself against every threat in the world, you\u2019ll soon run out of energy and make your life unbearable. Three-factor authentication here, a twenty-character password with musical notes and Chinese characters there, different browsers for different websites<\/a>, and abstinence from social media don\u2019t exactly sound life-asserting.<\/p>\n

What hurts the most is that using practically all such security measures won\u2019t help protect you against every threat: new ones just keep on sprouting up, and they call for new protection methods. Meanwhile, most new layers of security lower usability: having two-factor authentication<\/a> will never be easier than not having it. And that\u2019s the least obnoxious example. So what can you do about this? Create your own threat landscape, as corporations do when they design their security processes, and secure yourself only against those threats within that landscape.<\/p>\n

What a threat landscape is, and what it has to do with you<\/h2>\n

In the field of corporate security, a threat landscape is the aggregate of cyberwoes that threaten a company in a certain industry within a certain period of time. These include vulnerabilities, malware, and ransomware groups and the techniques they use.<\/p>\n

An overview of the threat landscape helps define what exactly the company needs to be protected against. Some threats will be more pressing than others, depending on the company\u2019s location and business. And since a security budget always has its limits, just like the number of security staff, it makes sense to secure against the truly relevant threats.<\/p>\n

Why not create a threat landscape like that for yourself and base your own personal security strategy on it? This would keep you from getting bogged down with multiple layers of protection and help you keep on using the internet with at least some degree of comfort.<\/p>\n

Building a personal threat landscape<\/h2>\n

Every individual, just like every company, has a threat landscape of their own. Whether you use, say, TikTok or Instagram, and whether you have a password manager<\/a> or not influences which threats are more relevant to you. Many other factors have an influence too, such as where you live, what operating system you have on your computer, what instant messaging apps you use, and who you text with using these apps.<\/p>\n

That said, all these personal threat landscapes have certain elements in common, as we all live in the 21st<\/sup> century, all use computers and smartphones, and all browse the Web. Therefore, for the purposes of this discussion, a personal threat landscape can be divided into common and individual parts, with the common part mostly applicable to everyone, and the individual part determined by the person\u2019s particular situation.<\/p>\n

The common part of a threat landscape<\/h3>\n

If you\u2019re a regular reader of this blog, you have a rough idea of the types of threats that are most frequent and relevant regardless of country of residence. First and foremost, these are phishing<\/strong>, data leaks<\/strong>, and various scams<\/strong>. Every single person needs to stay protected against these.<\/p>\n

The best safeguard against phishing is learning to detect it. To do this, you should do the following:<\/p>\n