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Five Quick Tips to Protect Your Privacy

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Privacy on the internet is a constant concern for all organizations today, and for good reasons. Fortunately, there are five simple solutions to help keep your organization’s privacy and company data more secure.

1. Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network)

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network service, helps to shield your identity from various entities, including independent hackers and even your internet provider. With a VPN, your data is encrypted and hidden on its way across the internet and between various connecting points on the way. Your location can also be shielded from third parties by a changed IP address.

2. Use a Password Manager

In this day and age, we need to make an account for just about everything. Keeping track of dozens of passwords can often be quite difficult when you consider the requirements to create a strong password. As a result, many people resort to interchanging passwords, which may seem like a viable solution, until one of your accounts suffers a breach and suddenly all of your accounts become vulnerable.

With a password manager, you can effectivity store all your passwords in one catalog on your browser or an easy to use application, so you no longer need to resort to the careless reuse of passwords or have to worry about losing your credentials.

In addition to this, password managers can generate long, random passwords for each individual account, greatly improving your security.

3. Encrypt Your Data

While encryption may sound like a foreign technology, saved for only the tech savvy, chances are you already have experience with it, if you own a cell phone. Also, any websites you visit secure with “https” encrypt the data it receives from you. As previously mentioned, to encrypt your personal data with a VPN is to transmit your data through a virtual “tunnel” that masks the content, rendering unreadable in plain text as it passes through from one node to the next.

In a very general sense, encryption is simple ‘securing’ your data by jumbling it up with random code until a user enters the right “key” to decrypt it. This key usually takes the form of a password, or PIN.

It is recommended that, where possible, to download an encryption program to encrypt files stored on your device, and to encrypt sensitive files when transferring information over the internet such as through email.

4. Use Two-Factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication (2FA) essentially adds another layer of protection to your accounts. With 2FA, a cyber attacker would need more than just your password. They would also need access to either your email, phone or applications. Activating 2FA means you will have to take an extra step to log into your accounts, each time, but the benefit would be enhanced protection and that is well worth the extra step for most individuals and organizations.

An added benefit of 2FA is that not only will it add an additional layer of security to your data, it will also buy you some extra time to change your password if a third party happens to get through your initial password.

5. Back Up Your Data

Lastly, it’s imperative to always have a back up of your most important files. If your computer or network is ever infected by ransomware, having your data saved to the cloud or a separate hard drive can really save you the headache of dealing with a malicious party holding your most valuable data hostage.

In summary, while this list should not serve as a be all and end all for securing your data, it is certainly a step in the right direction. That said, if you’re not at least committed to any of these five items, you’re not doing yourself any favors.

Contact us if you are interested in learning more about securing your organizations data.