Healthy personal hygiene is important. If we don’t maintain it our health will decline, and we may even drive people away. Cyber hygiene is similar, maintaining it will keep our lives healthier and we won’t infect those around us.
Hygiene is easiest to follow when you maintain a routine and use the right tools. Train yourself to be proactive and not reactive to cyber threats. It’s better to take care of your teeth by brushing often then having to get a cavity filled, the monotony may be annoying, but the pain could be much worse and have lasting impacts to your quality of life.
Tools are needed to maintain hygiene. Sure, you can take care of your teeth without a toothbrush but more effectively with the toothbrush. Cyber security needs tools to simplify and automate the process of protection. Having an anti-virus always watching your PC and a firewall watching your network is much easier then manually accomplishing these tasks with people and the margin for error is much greater.
Another routine that is generally overlooked but is important, passwords. Changing the passwords on all the most important accounts, including your PC will get you that extra step toward better hygiene. This activity is more interactive than the others and usually has more steps, also with this, maintain a password database. Not a document on your desktop name passwords, but a secure place that only you or those you trust have access to.
Last, and arguably most important, backups. This process can be mostly automated but the routine of checking them often could save a lot of frustration. Find your routine and stick with them, be healthy in life and in cyber life.
On the next episode what about your kid’s hygiene?