Module 5: Your Early-Warning System

55 minutes

Module 5: Your Early-Warning System

Everything you’ve built so far is defense: unique passwords, a manager, 2FA, passkeys, hardened devices, a checked router. This final module adds the thing defense can’t provide: knowing when something happens anyway.

Because something will. Some site you signed up for in 2019 will be breached in 2027. That isn’t pessimism; it’s the arithmetic from Module 1. The difference between someone with an early-warning system and someone without one isn’t whether the breach happens. It’s whether they hear about it from an automated email within days, or from a drained account months later. This module watches while you sleep, and it takes less setup time than any other module in the course.

It also closes the course by going where the attackers ultimately want to go — the money — and hands you the thing that keeps all five modules alive after you close this tab: a one-page printable checklist.

Six lessons:

  • Set Up Breach Alerts — Have I Been Pwned notifications on your addresses, plus the watchers you already own
  • One Address per Important Thing — aliases and masked emails, so leaks identify their own source and stuffing lists miss
  • When the Alert Fires — the calm 20-minute drill that turns a breach notice into an errand
  • Hardening the Money — carrier PIN, credit freezes, transaction alerts, virtual cards, and the IRS IP PIN almost nobody has heard of
  • The Audit Nobody Does — the “Sign in with Google” grants from 2015 that are still live, and the annual purge
  • The Personal Security Checklist — the printable one-pager: the done-once list plus the quarterly 15 minutes

What you’ll walk away with

  • Breach alerts standing watch on every address you use
  • A written, practiced answer to “I just got a breach email — now what?”
  • Freezes, PINs, and alerts on the accounts that hold real money
  • A checklist that maintains the whole system in 15 minutes a quarter

Time

About 55 minutes, most of it doing rather than reading. Then the final assessment and your certificate.