Overwhelmed by what feels like constant news of data breaches? With headline after headline about companies being breached, it’s easy to feel like it’s out of our control. That’s why it’s more important than ever to know how you can protect your information (and your clients’) from cyber attacks like the ones we’re always hearing about. But how do you accomplish that without stopping Internet use altogether? Although there is no way to prevent a breach entirely, there are plenty of best practices you can employ to significantly reduce their impact.

As the media knows, fear sells. These days, it can become a challenge to separate fact from fiction when reading the headlines. For example, a USA TODAY article from earlier this year reports on children succeeding in a “hack-the-election” event, while Slate Magazine tells a different side of the story about the same event.

With 2018 coming to a close, let’s get our facts straight on five of the most important information security stories from this year. Along the way, we’ll pick up some tips to better protect against cyberthreats.

There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to information security. As a financial advisor, you aren’t expected to know everything about security, yet clients rely on you to protect them against the latest threats. How can you confidently reassure them that you’re keeping their information safe?

In 2016, I invested 2 U.S. cents in bitcoin. Two years later, bitcoin had increased in value by more than 34 times, and my investment was worth—get ready for it—68 U.S. cents.

For those who take their investments more seriously, achieving a 3,400-percent return may seem like a wild success story—yet it’s happened! (See Figure 1.)

I’ll take a wild guess: you didn’t become a financial advisor to remediate identity theft. But because this kind of fraud can drastically affect their finances, clients often look to you for guidance to help them keep their identities protected.

As news of the Equifax breach broke in September 2017, hundreds of Commonwealth advisors reached out to the firm’s Information Security team, asking how to help clients avoid identity theft. Because of Equifax’s poorly managed response, the situation seemed to change hourly; it became a challenge for us all to process the news, develop an appropriate response, and help clients take the right steps to secure their personal information.