ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — There is a growing concern from the White House that Russia might plan cyberattacks in the United States.

What You Need To Know

  • Information Technology Consulting companies offer advice to people on how to protect their information

  • Tip: don't save a password on a device or computer

  • Back up data in multiple ways and unplugged

The potential for attacks are expected to be geared at critical infrastructure here in the U.S. Attacks that could include social engineering, spear phishing, and hacking.

Tom Craig is the CEO of the information technology consulting company Advanced Systems Solutions. He works with 75 companies across the U.S. and has helped the National Security Agency. He says a Russian cyber attack could have several distinct possibilities.

“What exactly are they going to go after?” Craig asks hypothetically. “So then it becomes a question of not will they hit us and what information will it be? It’s how fast can we respond to that incident, to that breach?”

When it comes to protecting data Craig offers a 3-2-1 approach.

  • 3 copies of your data
  • 2 different kinds of media (either a DVD or USB drive)
  • 1 of those need to be off-site (unplugged)

Craig also says there are other ways to protect yourself right now from a cyber attack.

For starters, don’t save passwords on your device or computer.

Craig says write them on a piece of paper and hide it some place good — perhaps not even in your house.

Passwords should be at least 14 characters, and always try to set up multi-factor authentication. That is when you type in your password you will then need an additional code to type in, which will reduce your chance of a breach by 99.9%.