Cyber Hygiene. Are you familiar with this term? While some of you might be experienced IT professionals, to most of you this term is new. As a matter of fact, we asked 100 people, “What does Cyber Hygiene mean to you” and the most common answer was… “it has something to do with cleaning your computer.” Although that’s a good answer, cleaning your computer does not really fall under the realm of cyber hygiene.
Cyber Hygiene: Defined
If Webster asked me to define Cyber Hygiene, it would be something along the lines of “The proactive countermeasures one can take to reduce their risk to acceptable levels while using the internet”. For the sake of this blog, we are going to label Cyber Hygiene “CBH”, so I don’t have to keep spelling it out and it’s a cool-looking acronym (lol).
Cyber Hygiene: What are the best practices?
Cyber Hygiene is the daily practice of good habits such as using a VPN or setting strong passwords that do not include your birthday or kid’s name. CBH also includes using one debit/credit card for all online transactions or reading email sender addresses before opening attachments from senders.
Cyber Hygiene: Current Trends & In The Future
Cyber Hygiene will be vital in the development and adoption of web 3.0, I say this because the way in which we know the internet is going to vastly change over the next few years and push technology limits beyond what people can imagine. Technology has given humanity significant benefits & convenience such as automation in logistics, healthcare, and agriculture. This has increased productivity, saved time, money, and resources. When most developers build an application, traditionally security is an afterthought! Many developers may never stop and wonder, “How can this technology be used with malicious intent”. The vast majority are the new aged “front-end” developers that don’t really understand back-end developing. For my non-technical people, think of “back-end developers” as the hard code that the computer understands, and “front-end developers” code the stuff you and I can see. I hope that makes sense (coding was confusing to me at first as well don’t feel bad). Getting back to the point I was making, learning & education should be a top priority in the development of web 3.0 for two major reasons: IoT is coming & the lack of Cyber Culture. We’ll discuss IoT in a later blog, but if you’re up to it I’d suggest starting your search on DuckDuckGo.
The Importance of Cyber Hygiene
With more and more devices becoming internet-dependent, the potential for a cyber-attack increases. This is why practicing good cyber hygiene is of high importance heading into this next century. Things like having a camera cover over top your laptop camera won’t be an option, but something that becomes second nature. . I mean there is no law that says you must brush your teeth or shower daily, but we do it because we know it’s the best way to care for our bodies from harmful germs and bacteria. So, you get my point, CBH will become one of those unspoken practices that become second nature in our very near future if they are not already. We learn very early on how important it is to practice daily hygiene, things like putting on deodorant or cleaning behind your ears (I hope you do lol). These types of proactive measures prevent you from having an unpleasant smell (you stink). Why can’t the same be said for CBH?
From my research, I wasn’t able to uncover much data about cyber security % with small children. However, based on the data I conducted, most people don’t begin practicing Security Awareness Training and education until they are in college (if they’re lucky) or on their first corporate job. I am sure if I conducted a survey for those people who have never received any type of formal security awareness training the numbers would be alarming. I wrote this blog with the intention to raise awareness of the importance of CBH and the potential effects it can have on anyone, especially an organization. I highly encourage organizations to invest heavily in security awareness training to decrease the likelihood of a cyber-attack stemming from negligence.
Protect Your Data
If you take away anything from this blog let it be this: Proper cyber hygiene will help protect you, your loved ones, your business, and your data. Ignoring this will make you low hanging fruit in an inevitable cyber security breech or cyber-attack.
Cyber Hygiene Training
Cyber Hygiene 101 aims to educate smart device users on the threats & vulnerabilities that exist online and how to protect themselves. We cover everything from the best practices for protecting your data to the basics of recognizing potential threats. To sign-up for this free webinar while available, visit our Cyber Hygiene Training page below!
Cyber Hygiene Sources:
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