Your professional identity has never been more exposed. Read this blog to discover ten tips for protecting your identity online in 2026.
Threat actors are targeting professional identities with increasing sophistication using artificial intelligence and deepfake technology.
This means it’s more important than ever to take steps to protect your professional identity, especially if you are a business owner or higher up at a company.
Here are ten steps I’m taking in 2026 to protect my professional identity:
Traditionally, using a password manager has been effective for businesses to remember passwords and keep them secure.
However, with a rise in session hijacking (AKA stealing “cookies” that bypass password management systems), employees will need to use stronger hardware.
Personally, I’m going to transition to FIDO2-compliant hardware keys (like YubiKey 5 Series), forcing a "Passwordless" workflow for my corporate email and Slack to ensure that even if a login is intercepted, it’s useless without my physical token.
In 2025, I received several emails, texts, and even convincing phone calls from my “CEO” asking me to send money, buy gift cards, and more. CEO fraud is nothing new, but AI video and audio clones make these attempts much more convincing.
To combat this, I’m reading up on my employee handbook that contains advice on work communication, including:
In essence, no financial decision happens without a verbal confirmation via a pre-arranged, non-digital safe word or a physical "callback" to a known number. If your workplace doesn’t have clear rules surrounding communication, I’d add those pronto.
Let’s face it, many of us no longer have a choice when it comes to having a digital footprint that connects to our jobs or workplace. What we can control is what personal information we allow into the public eye.
This is why I’m evaluating my digital footprint, making sure that my LinkedIn and personal social media accounts are scrubbed of private information that I wouldn’t want threat actors to exploit.
There are also enterprise-grade data removal services like DeleteMe that I can use to scrub my home address or private phone numbers.
I’m also regularly training myself to stay safe online so I can keep up with current threat trends.
If you’re a remote or hybrid worker, your home Wi-Fi network could be your company’s weakest link.
To combat this, I’m making sure I have a firewall installed that filters only for allowed sessions. Configuring firewalls can be tricky, so I’m following these firewall best practices.
Another step I’m taking to protect my identity in 2026 is to avoid signing in with Google for business tools, as this can create a single point of failure.
Instead, I’m using identity management software like Okta, JumpCloud, and Microsoft Entra to sign in to my tools. This enables conditional access, meaning my identity only works if I’m in a specific geographic location and on a healthy device.
It’s really easy to get into the habit of requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA) in both your personal and professional lives.
Yet, it’s something that most of us forget to enable. So, in 2026, I’m making sure that every time I enter a password, it requires either MFA or a passkey (e.g., facial recognition).
This will protect my identity from threat actors who’d use it to exploit my workplace.
Check out this podcast for more info on how to use MFA to stay safe online.
Scammers can now clone our faces, voices, etc. to hack into our workplace networks. That’s why I’m taking extra steps to protect my personal social media accounts, including limiting viewership to only friends and family, and evaluating my privacy settings.
If you’re an executive and want to go the extra mile, you can use a digital watermarking tool like Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative for all official video/photo releases. This provides a provenance trail so stakeholders can verify that a video of the CEO is genuine.
Business identity theft sometimes begins with a single, compromised subscription. Fortunately, it’s easy to create “virtual cards” using services like Privacy.com or Ramp for business vendors. Then, if a business partner is breached, your employee's credit card won’t be affected.
It’s also vital to regularly evaluate your third-party and business associate risk, and required if you need to become PCI or HIPAA compliant.
Check out this blog for more information on business associates, and this blog to learn more about third-party security.
I often need to use third-party productivity tools and software for my job. Yet, these can be a source of compromise if they aren’t being used/are out of date but still have access.
That’s why I plan to conduct a monthly audit of all my OAuth permissions, revoking access to any AI note-taker or browser extension that hasn’t been used for 30 days.
Small business owners often have both their personal credit score and a business credit score. Monitoring both can be the difference between your identity being stolen and your credit being destroyed.
It’s easy to monitor your business credit report with sites like Experian Business. Some credit card companies offer free credit score monitoring, so take full advantage of that if you can.
I’m a firm believer in small, simple steps that help create a safer online environment. By completing these ten steps in 2026, you’ll be better defended against online threat actors in both your personal and business life.
Whether it’s maintaining PCI compliance so you can protect your customer card data or acting quickly if you experience a breach, having a trustworthy cybersecurity partner can help you feel confident in your security efforts.
If you’d like to discuss how you can better protect your small business, reach out to an expert today.
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