a video-call checkup of your accounts, devices, and habits
Security and convenience pull in opposite directions. Every step you take to make an account harder for an attacker also makes it slightly harder for you. The tradeoff is personal — but most people are sitting much further toward convenience than they realize, and a small number of well-chosen moves shift the balance back without making daily life much harder.
A Security Review walks through that balance with you. With you live on a video call, I help you look at your accounts, devices, and habits that make up your digital life, find the highest-leverage changes, and leave you with a clear picture of where you stand and how to keep it that way.
Most people don't actually decide where they sit between convenience and security — the default just happens. We start by naming the tradeoff out loud, so every choice that follows is intentional.
Password reuse is the single biggest gap in most people's security, and the single easiest one to close. We set up a password manager, transfer your existing passwords into it, and practice the habit of letting the manager do the work — so the next time a company loses your data, the damage stops at that one account.
I lean toward using 1password in most instances because it separates passwords from two of the biggest tech vendors - Google and Apple. Getting your passwords into a third company protects you in case one of those two accounts get compromised. 1password is an excellent product with a long history of securely storing and syncing files. It has a complex vault concept, which is its main downside for home users. But to me the added complexity almost always outweighs the alternatives if you are getting serious about personal digital security.
We walk through the highest impact accounts — email, banks and brokerages, your cell carrier, your Apple, Google, and Microsoft accounts, government services, primary shopping sites, health insurance, payment apps, cloud storage — and check each one's password, two-factor settings, and recovery path.
Email is the master key. Almost every other account recovers through it. Securing email is the most important step after getting unique passwords everywhere. We dive in to check for the following: forwarding rules, filters, connected devices, and one-time password history. Those are the places where attackers can hide after a takeover and collect data over months or years.
A printed sheet that tells your future self how to get back in — which email each account recovers to, which phone number, and which questions you've answered. Locked out at the worst moment is a solvable problem if you wrote it down first.
Operating system updates, login options, screen lock, and data protection.
Beyond passwords and two-factor, we turn on transaction alerts at every account — so the first sign of trouble is a notification on your phone, not a line item on next month's statement.
Accounts at all three credit bureaus, each with its own password and two-factor. Credit freezes placed at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, and the lesser-known reports (Chex, NCTUE) considered as well.
The patterns behind modern scams: requests for two-factor codes from people claiming to be your bank, caller ID spoofing that makes a fraudster look like a real institution, sender addresses dressed up to look familiar. Knowing the shape of these attempts is most of the defense.
A single document that lists each recurring household account — provider, contact number, registered email, phone, and address, whether autopay is enabled, and which card funds it (and when that card expires). The kind of reference a family member could pick up if they had to.
This is just me on a video call hourly with you, so it's completely customized to what you feel is important or what you need. If a security review sounds useful — for yourself, an aging parent, or a household you're responsible for — get in touch.