I work in a moderately sized IT environment. We have been working many tireless nights after a cyber incident (a couple weeks going at this point). This statement I (and many others) have is always and will only become more true:
"It's not a matter of if something happens to you. It's when"
Double check your firewall rules (or enable it and its defaults if you haven't already). Simply denying stuff coming in in the first place will protect you from a lot of random attacks that are happening very frequently per minute. And yes, they will try you as well, not just companies. Anything they can find, they're going to try to get.
Make sure you have backups. Multiple if possible, and at different locations. Test that they actually work. When was the last time you tested your backups? Do you even have any backups? Encrypted / Immutable for at least a period of time would be best, but if you're just an individual with small amounts of stuff, I would understand if you didn't. But I would still say you should.
Be more aware of what you're doing on the internet. Everything out there is wanting to get your data, at every possible moment. That's not a tinfoil hat theory, it's just reality. You should not be giving your data over willy-nilly to every site that wants it, unless it's a site you know and trust.
If you're not using MFA by this point, you're just asking for problems. Yeah, it can be annoying. But it is such a huge variably in protecting your accounts. Ideally you'd be using some kind of application for this, rather than text or email. Those were fine at the start, but they're quite rudimentary and should be phased out by this point given how easy they can be manipulated.
AI isn't your friend. It will take anything and everything you give it, and use it elsewhere. They will use your data however they deem fit. And that cloud you're using? Just someone else's computer. They will get hacked. You will have your data affected on that "cloud". Be ready for that.
I'm writing this after working over 12 hour shifts daily for about 2 weeks at this point. Given that we were honestly pretty well off... we got lucky. Most of our protections worked, and what didn't was minor and we were prepared to lose in an incident.
And people still don't understand that it is THEM at the computer that is the biggest flaw. You need to be wary of everything you do online / in email, chat, gaming, EVERYTHING on the internet. This isn't meant to be a fear post or anything of the sort. I just want you to think about everything you're doing involving computers, and maybe double check what you've got going on in the background which may not be up to date (which I'm wagering is the vast majority of stuff).
My PSA is now over.
