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Tech words, in plain English.

1317 terms, each explained at three levels, for home and for work.

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A typical message from an IT provider. Point at, tap or tab to any highlighted word.

From
Your IT support team
To
All staff
Subject
Security changes starting Monday

Hi everyone,

You may have seen a phishing email this week pretending to be from our bank. Please don’t click links in messages like that. To make these attacks less likely to work, three things change on Monday.

Signing in to email will need MFA: after your password, approve the prompt on your phone. We’re also setting everyone up with a password manager, and we’ve switched on dark web monitoring for our company logins.

On Saturday morning we’re moving our DNS to a new provider, so the website may be briefly unreachable.

Short security awareness training sessions start next week. And if an email from “the boss” ever asks you to pay an invoice urgently, that’s a classic sign of business email compromise. Don’t pay it: open a ticket with the help desk first.

Thanks,
IT Support

Start here for small business

Six terms worth knowing if you run or work in a small office. Read them in order.

  1. Phishing

    Phishing is when someone sends a fake message — usually an email, text, or website link — designed to trick you into giving up personal information like passwords or credit card numbers.

  2. Business email compromise (BEC)

    Business email compromise (BEC) is a targeted email fraud where criminals pose as a trusted person -- a boss, supplier, or colleague -- to redirect payments or steal sensitive information.

  3. Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

    Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds a second step to logging in -- typically a code from an app, a tap on your phone, or a hardware key -- on top of your password.

  4. Password manager

    A password manager is an encrypted vault that stores all your passwords and can generate long, unique ones for every account.

  5. Ransomware

    Ransomware is malicious software that locks up your files by encrypting them, then demands a ransom (usually in cryptocurrency) to restore access.

  6. Security awareness training

    Security awareness training is ongoing education that helps employees spot and respond to threats like phishing, social engineering, and unsafe data handling.

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