First Alert Safety Check: Cybersecurity Awareness Month opens discussion to online safety [Video]

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – Since 2004, the President and Congress have declared October to be Cybersecurity Awareness Month, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA.

Almost everything we do today is connected through computers or networks. Assistant Professor at the Beacom College of Computer and Cyber Sciences at Dakota State University Andrew Kramer urged that it’s imperative we protect our devices.

“There are risks of data loss, or breaches so we all want to work together to make sure everything is secure,” said Kramer.

A key component of this is our passwords. According to officials, the days of very complex passwords with lowercase, uppercase and special characters are over.

“The new guideline is rather than making very complex passwords and changing them frequently, you should focus on longer passwords. Not worry so much about the character complexity, but make sure that they are long passwords and …