Best Practices to Protect Data from Cyber Threats

In Today’s Era, whether it’s housewife, a freelancer or a small businessman, all have a lot of data in their computers, smartphones or other storage devices in the form of documents, notes, pictures, audios, videos or emails. But are you aware, often your activities, knowingly or unknowingly make your data vulnerable to loss, damage, malware or even theft by hackers. This can lead to not just loss of valuable information or well-kept memories but often cause heavy financial damages.

Thus, it is important to be alert and practice data protection recommendations to avoid sensitive or personal data loss situations. Remember your simple actions such as setting passwords to your system or updating antivirus and so on, can provide utmost data security and protect you from untoward data loss incidents.

This blog recommends the best practices to protect your data from getting lost, damaged or hacked. Read on to know how to protect your data.

1. Have a Backup of Your Data

The ideal solution recommended for data protection and security is regularly taking a backup of your data. Imagine, if unfortunately you lose your laptop or crash your hard drive at least a data backup will keep you in a better situation. You should backup your data on multiple storage devices like an external hard drive, portable storage device or cloud.

2. Use a Trusted Data Recovery Software

In cases of adverse data loss situations, a data recovery software can be beneficial. There are many data recovery software available online, which you can use. But be careful as not all are capable enough to completely recover your data safely.

If your drive is severely corrupt or if you have lost your data due to accidental formatting, deletion or virus attack then a recommended, secure & trusted solution – Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows can be used. This software can recover all types of data which includes photos, documents, videos, audios, emails, etc. from lost partitions, hard drives, external storage media, and CDs/DVDs.

Download and try the software now

Tips for Using Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows

• Save recovered data to a separate partition or drive and not in the drive you scanned.
• Do not save recovered data to any corrupt or failing drive.
• Immediately stop using the drive that indicates corruption or damage to increase your chances of successful data recovery.

3. Use a Password Security

Password security allows you to protect data that you do not want others to access. It is advisable to always protect your files, folders, emails, and other sensitive personal information so that it is unreadable for others. Set a strong password which is a mix of alphabets, number and special characters. Never use the same or similar passwords for separate accounts or files.

4. Update Your Antivirus Software

If your antivirus software is not updated regularly, it will not be effective in protecting against new malware attacks. An updated version of antivirus guards against latest threats and other vulnerabilities. So regularly update your antivirus solution for enhanced data protection.

5. Regularly Update Your Operating System

As per Kaspersky Labs, in May 2017, 98% of the WannaCry targets were Windows 7 computers. This shows that the outdated operating systems are an easy target for the cyber-criminals. Thus, it is advisable to update your operating system regularly to protect it from new threats and malware attacks.

6. Enable Automatic Updates

It is imperative to keep your operating system up to date to help ensure that your computer will be protected against known virus and spyware threats.

Follow the below steps to update the computer automatically:

• Go to Settings of your computer.
• Click on Update & security.
• Select Windows Update in the left pane.
• Click on Advanced options on the right to open a new window of Choose how updates are installed.
• Select Automatic from the drop-down.
• Check Give me updates for other Microsoft products when I update Windows.
• Close the Advanced Options window.

7. Do Not Connect to Public Wi-Fi Networks

Public or untrusted Wi-Fi connections put your data at high risk. Hackers or thieves working on the same network can easily access your sensitive information such as passwords of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, Bank account details or other personal information. They can later misuse this information as your impostor.

8. Avoid Visiting Untrusted Sites

Do not visit or download from prohibited sites or those without the security layer of the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). The HTTPS websites offers security over a computer network and ensures that the interaction of users on the website are private. Further, avoid visiting HTTP protocol sites as they can expose your system to malware and hackers.

9. Use Firewall

Firewall acts as a protecting shield between your system and the Internet. Whether shopping online, accessing a bank account or other sensitive personal data online, Firewall prevents hackers to get into your account and steal data through security loops.

Conclusion

Data protection is an ultimate necessity in today’s digital world. The above best practices will not only provide data security but also ensure tension-free online and offline usage of your computers and mobile devices.

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About The Author

Isha Rikhi

Isha is a technical blogger and data recovery expert. She has experience in Windows data recovery. She writes about technical tips and tutorials.