May The Force Be With You

Every day, we log on to our computers and tablets, browse the internet on our mobile devices, click on links, read/send and forward emails, transfer and download files, part with personal information, and publish sensitive content. Rarely do we give much thought or question to the safety of what we are doing. Rarely do we think about the potential dangers or risks. In fact, we often neglect our digital wellbeing and proceed without adequate protection.

It is important to remember the potential scale of the problems we face and where we are as a digital society. We rely on more and more third-party cloud-based services to complete daily tasks. We part with more of our personal information (often without even knowing). Especially now, we work from home more often and are bringing work devices home to complete that work. Not only are we using more devices in our day to day lives, but it also seems like every website and app requires you to create a profile. Now more than ever, there are more and more hackers, threats and scams that lurk around every corner.

After reading the last paragraph, you may feel that most of it does not affect you or could never happen to you. You are not alone! We are all guilty of this! We are naïve in believing that the next attack will happen to someone else rather than ourselves. The good news is, staying protected is not so difficult.

Here are some steps to ensure you are doing what you can to protect yourself as well as your files.

10 Steps to Protect Yourself Online:

1. Don’t open mail from strangers
2. Make sure your devices are up to date
3. Use strong passwords
4. Use two-factor authentication
5. Don’t click on strange-looking links
6. Avoid using unsecured public Wi-Fi
7. Back up your data regularly
8. Be smart with financial information
9. Educate your family
10. Avoid sharing personal information

For the full article, please visit https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-how-to-5-ways-you-can-help-yourself-stay-secure-online.html.

Here are important tips for storing files digitally:

1. Enable full disk encryption on all devices
2. Restrict confidential data to the office
3. Don’t transfer unencrypted data over the Internet
4. Delete sensitive data you no longer need
5. Encrypt backups. (important to have backups done in a separate location, off-site)
6. Store more than one copy
7. Secure archive and crypto container passwords

Backups are the most important factor as without proper and consistent backups a business can be out of business for a long period of time.

Simple forms of offsite storage are: Google Drive, One Drive, Office 365, Google for business. It is important that retention policies are set up on these services otherwise your data will be deleted after 30 days or sooner.

Here is another great article on this important topic. Check it out here: https://www.internetadvisor.com/how-to-protect-yourself-against-internet-fraud?msID=3360a363-91b7-4f2c-9edf-5245547ec449

We hope these tips will help you to ensure your and your families’ digital safety.