Is your data truly safe? Even if you’ve installed cybersecurity and anti-malware software, your data may still be at risk. It takes a number of precautions to ensure total data security, but maybe you think you don’t need to worry about data loss. Regardless if you’re an executive, student, or homemaker, data loss can negatively affect your way of life. It’s everything on your computer.
Take a minute to look at your documents folder or explore your cloud storage. What’s on there? Music? Your kid’s homework? A short story you’ve been working on? Company records? Can you afford to lose this information? Why wait until it’s gone to worry if you can live without it or not, take the steps necessary to protect your data now to avoid total disaster later.
In case of emergency: If you do suffer unexpected data loss, you’re not totally without a life preserver. There are companies that specialize in quick hard drive recovery, such as the Toronto data recovery service Secure Data Recovery. Specialists take your hard drive into what’s called a “clean room” and the engineers carefully reconstruct the damaged files, and hopefully can recover that which is important to you.
Proactive Ways to Secure Your Data
Data isn’t just found on a computer’s hard drive; it’s found on mobile devices, networks, social networking sites, and more. The following outlines some methods for protecting your data no matter where it’s stored. These are your best practices for protecting your identity, credit, and those files that are most important to you (photos, music, and important documents, such as tax paperwork).
- Cybersecurity and anti-malware software: you should be running your cybersecurity suite daily. You can have your systems do this autonomously by scheduling daily runs. You can have it run overnight while you’re sleeping. Make sure to download cybersecurity on all your devices.
- Make regular backups: You should be backing up your data regularly; this includes making backups of the data store on your mobile devices. If something happens, such as you’re hacked, you can simply upload the backup file and move on with your life.
- Use removable disks to save your most important data: Save your data to an external hard drive or other removable disk. Store these disks in protective areas away from dust, dander, fire, and water.
- Use strong passwords: You want your social media and other online engagements to stay protected? Use a strong password and change it often. The best passwords are at least eight characters, feature upper and lowercase letters, and feature numbers and symbols. Use a different password for each login; that way, if a hacker is able to determine one of your passwords, he won’t have access to all of your online accounts.
- Always log off: Especially when using public computers, it’s essential that you log off from social media and anywhere else. For personal computers and devices, use a password or immediately shut down the device when you’re done with it.
- Use encryption and avoid unencrypted websites: Avoid surfing websites that don’t have “https” at the beginning of the web address. Https is the secure version of “http.” It means that the connection is encrypted, and that means third parties can’t intercept the data sent between you and the site.
- Update everything: Don’t wait to update iOS, Android, or your computer’s operating system. Operating system updates are the most important and shouldn’t be put off because they come with bug fixes and advanced security. Also, it’s important that you update your applications and any software you have installed.
Remember: if you do lose data, all isn’t lost; however, why wait to see if data can be recovered when these methods are proven to protect it now? Do your best to employ all of these strategies, and avoid any connections that aren’t secure. Encryption is your best friend and cybersecurity is your greatest protector.
\Remember: if you do lose data, all isn’t lost; however, why wait to see if data can be recovered when these methods are proven to protect it now? Do your best to employ all of these strategies, and avoid any connections that aren’t secure. Encryption is your best friend and cybersecurity is your greatest protector.
