Cyberhygiene: 15 healthy habits for living with information

Ruslan Rakhmetov, Security Vision

This article will be useful for those who are interested in how to behave online in order not to ‘litter’; how to improve their security and what services and programmes exist for this purpose. Cyber hygiene is somewhat similar to periodic cleaning of the house, checking electrical appliances before going on holiday, renewing car insurance together with passing a technical inspection. It is desirable to do it regularly and do not be afraid of complexity. If you turn some actions into habits (like washing your hands before eating and brushing your teeth every day), you won't waste energy and nerves on doing them (you probably don't get too tired after performing daily procedures).

We'll divide the article itself into parts, but that's not due to prioritisation. Some habits you may already have. Some have been replaced for you by specialised remedies. So we suggest starting small and implementing individual cyber hygiene rituals at a pace that suits you. Just remember that your peace of mind and sometimes your safety depends on a few dozen simple actions. And we'll help you by rounding up 15 useful habits and talking about tech tools that will help you.

We go online from a computer or smartphone not only to work, but also to solve everyday tasks: find and listen to a new music album, watch a film, buy a new book, clothes or simply order groceries for the week ahead. All this becomes available when using web applications or software. So let's start by looking at network behaviour and security of the applications themselves, and then move on to the data itself.

Transmitting data over the network

Paying attention to the address bar in the browser is useful because attackers can make a copy of a useful site and place it on the network by substituting a few characters. So, for example, securityvision.ru and secnrityvlslon.ru are two different addresses, one of which may be useful to you, and the second - vice versa. In addition to the name of the site should also pay attention to the protocol on which it works (modern sites rarely use http, replacing it with faster more secure https). Encryption is also provided by the router itself, you can check its capabilities by searching for the phrases WPA2 or WPA3.

If you understand that the source of Wi-Fi signal passes through everything you download or send over the Internet, you can be more vigilant about open and free sources of the Internet, because ‘give away’ it can and malicious person. And to feel safer at home, it is worth changing the password from the router administrator page. This ritual can be compared to changing the locks or the whole door when you move into a flat that has been used by strangers before you. Standard passwords can be found in the documentation, which means that you can get full access to your devices by simply brute force (they are usually the simplest or even nonexistent). By the same token, you can change the name of the connection itself so that you can't immediately recognise the operator or device model.

Useful habits:

- Read the website address

- Ensure data encryption

- Be sceptical of Wi-Fi signals

- Customise your personal router and the network itself

- Update router firmware from the manufacturer's website

Application security

By downloading applications to your mobile phone through official shops, you simplify the procedure of their regular updating. Every day we receive information about discovered vulnerabilities in different applications and operating systems. If you use your browser often, update it. Also pay attention to the status of application updates to receive protection from developers for vulnerabilities discovered earlier. It's important to strike a balance here, as updates can sometimes ‘break’ something, but as a rule they are temporary and fixable, unlike losing money from your card or social network page.

The more applications, the more opportunities for attackers, so along with dusting the house, you can also simply throw out unnecessary applications. Such a ritual will not only help to increase security, but also save space for something really useful. Using a computer at home, it is also convenient to create a separate account without elevated privileges for those relatives and friends who use the device not as carefully as you do. The best thing to do, of course, is to talk about useful habits, but even when using the device yourself, you can limit the capabilities and accesses of the apps themselves (which is more convenient to do on mobile devices).

Useful habits:

- Use licensed software

- Download from trusted sources

- Update to new versions

- Uninstall old and unused software

- Limit the capabilities of programmes and users

Data security

In the last part of the article we had time to touch on the importance of updates, but we talked more about development security, which doesn't depend on us as much as updating our own data. Personal accounts with a separate login and password are often used to access services and services, which if hacked can pretend to be you and harm you. The password from a social network where personal correspondence is located, and the password from an online shop to which a bank card is linked (as well as other passwords) - these are things that depend directly on us. If you get in the habit of updating your passwords periodically, you can protect yourself from the effects of data breaches. It is also useful to create different passwords for different applications and tasks, so that once you have one password, it is impossible to log in to any service under your name.

Many services will solve this task for you: the operating system at work will ask you to change your password every few months, social networks and banks will most likely use a second factor of protection (sms, call, special code, etc.). But you shouldn't rely on everyone: if you can protect your data yourself, update your password and use multi-factor authentication (which, by the way, we briefly described in one of our reviews).

We all also store data on flash drives, computers or in the cloud, where a few habits will also help you. To share a file in the cloud, you don't have to share your username and password, you can do a read link. If the service doesn't allow you to control access, the file itself can be password protected with a regular archiver. If you throw away a flash drive or hard drive - make sure that the data on them is securely wiped (sometimes even from a formatted flash drive you can recover information).

Useful habits:

- Use different passwords

- Update them and make them harder

- Use two-factor authentication

- Delete important files securely

- Control access (read only, encryption, etc.)

We hope these 15 simple actions will make your online life easier. We've also compiled 10 simple and free services that can help:

1. router setup instructions

2. VPN for security on a public network

3. check the SSL certificate of a website and other details

4. search engine with high privacy

5. online file scanning for viruses

6. email address data leak checker

7. password generator

8. password vault for better password protection than browser

9. secure data deletion

10. recovery of deleted files (if deleted normally).