PiSence

Cyber Safety Center — Learn, Protect, Act

Practical, student-friendly and business-aware guidance on staying safe online. This page focuses on cyber safety — what it is, what actually happened in recent incidents, and exactly what you can do to protect yourself and people you care about.

Why Cyber Safety Matters

Cyber safety protects identity, privacy and the systems families and organisations rely on. Good habits reduce the risk of identity theft, scams, data loss and emotional harm online. This page aims to be practical — follow these steps today.

Top Practical Steps (quick wins)

  • Use a password manager and enable MFA for email, social, banking and school accounts.
  • Keep devices and software up-to-date — enable safe auto-updates for OS and apps.
  • Back up important files to offline or cloud backups and test restores periodically.
  • Think before you click — treat unexpected links or attachments as suspicious.
  • Limit sharing of location, schedules or personal identifiers on social platforms.

Student & Teen Checklist

  1. Unique passwords for school vs personal accounts; use a password manager.
  2. Enable authenticator-based MFA; avoid SMS when possible.
  3. Don’t install unknown "study" apps without checking reviews & permissions.
  4. Limit public profile info that could be used to answer recovery questions.
  5. Tell a trusted adult if something online makes you uncomfortable or frightened.

Parents & Guardians — Advice

  • Keep devices in shared spaces for younger children and enable appropriate parental controls.
  • Teach kids to never share addresses, phone numbers, or school schedules publicly.
  • Encourage open communication about strange or upsetting contacts and messages.
  • Ensure backups and recovery methods exist for important family data.

Representative incidents (2020–2025)

Study the patterns — supply-chain, ransomware, exposed services, phishing.
2020

SolarWinds supply-chain compromise (2020)

Widespread supply-chain compromise that impacted government & private sectors.

2020

Twitter account hijack (2020)

High-profile accounts were used in a coordinated bitcoin scam.

2020

Garmin ransomware outage (2020)

Ransomware caused service outages for fitness & aviation services.

2021

Microsoft Exchange / Hafnium (2021)

ProxyLogon vulnerabilities exploited to gain access to mail servers.

2021

Colonial Pipeline ransomware (2021)

Major pipeline shutdown and fuel distribution disruption.

2021

Kaseya VSA / REvil (2021)

Supply-chain ransomware affecting many MSP customers.

2021

Log4Shell (Log4j) vulnerability (2021)

Critical remote code execution in highly-used Java logging library.

2021

JBS ransomware (2021)

Large food supplier hit by ransomware, causing temporary disruption.

2023

MOVEit Transfer breaches (2023)

Exploitation of a file-transfer product leading to mass data exfiltration.

2022

LastPass credential incident (2022–2023)

Staged access and credential theft leading to follow-on disclosures.

How to stay safe — expanded checklist

Account & Identity

  • Use long unique passwords or generated secrets stored in a manager.
  • Enable MFA with an authenticator app or hardware key; remove old phone numbers.
  • Review active sessions and remove devices you don’t recognise.

Device & App Security

  • Keep OS and apps updated; enable disk encryption and automatic screen lock.
  • Install apps from official stores and inspect app permissions before granting access.

Network & Home Router

  • Change default router admin passwords, update firmware, and disable unnecessary services (e.g. UPnP if not needed).
  • Use a separate guest network for visitors and IoT devices.

Phishing & Social Engineering

  • Stop and verify: don’t act under pressure. Confirm unusual requests by calling or messaging a known contact.
  • Hover over links to check destinations; never enter credentials after clicking email links without verifying.

Backups & Incident Preparedness

  • Keep at least two independent backups, one offline or immutable. Test restores periodically.
  • Have an incident contact list (IT/helpdesk/bank) and a simple step-by-step plan (isolate, notify, restore).

Frequently Asked Questions

Note: incident names and short descriptions are for awareness and study. If you republish, please verify facts from primary sources such as vendor advisories, CERT posts and reputable reporting.