Just like personal hygiene is crucial for the body, cyber hygiene is very important for a secure cyber presence. As we all know personal hygiene is a set of routine practices such as brushing teeth, washing hands, etc.
If we talk about cyber hygiene, then it is also a set of habits. Everyone out there in the cyber world must be familiar with and practice these hygiene habits.
These habits must be practiced to protect privacy, prevent data loss, and stay safe from threats in the cyber world. To sum up, cyber hygiene is a more proactive approach toward cybersecurity.
Why is Cyber Hygiene Important?
There is a wide range of threats that everyone in the cyber world faces from time to time. These threats include malware, ransomware, phishing attacks, password attacks, data breaches, etc. By having your cyber hygiene on point, you can keep both your hardware and software safe from all these threats. Whether you’re an individual or an organization, in today’s digital world, improving your cyber hygiene should be of topmost priority.
Cyber hygiene practices keep scanning your cyber presence as well as devices from time to time and at regular intervals. Well, these scans detect any kind of malware, virus, or anything suspicious present on the device. These scans are run on all downloaded files as well as removable media.
These scans make sure that there are not any kind of viruses, ransomware, spyware, worms, rootkits, etc. on the device. Hence, with proper cyber hygiene, you can be aware of all the various potential cyber threats. Cyber hygiene can help you remove, delete, and neutralize any potential threats found.
By now, we are sure that you must be clear about what cyber hygiene is and why it is important. So, now let’s move to the part that deals with ways of improving cyber hygiene.
Best Ways to Improve Cyber Hygiene
To ensure proper security and maintain cyber hygiene, there are a number of practices you must go for. These are practices you must consider to secure both your hardware and software from a range of cybersecurity threats.
Well, these practices will keep you safe from all cybersecurity threats such as malware, ransomware, DDoS, data breaches, and more. So, without any further ado, let’s have a look at the ways to improve your cyber hygiene.
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Use Right Anti-Malware & Antivirus Software
Using the right anti-malware and antivirus software is arguably the most important cyber hygiene that you should practice. It’s because such software acts as the first line of defense when it comes to fighting against malicious cyber threats.
We can’t emphasize more how it’s an absolute must to have efficient anti-malware and antivirus software on your device.
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Use Proper Network Firewall
After an anti-malware and antivirus software, you must use a proper network firewall to ensure cyber hygiene. It’s because a network firewall acts as the second line of defense when it comes to fighting against malicious cyber threats.
Well, just as the name suggests, a network firewall is a special security tool that stands as a wall between your device and malicious cyber threats. A network firewall wall prevents any kind of unauthorized access or malicious cyber threats from entering your private network.
Hence, you can use a network firewall to filter incoming traffic and block outsiders from accessing your private devices and data. You can either opt for a hardware or a software firewall to protect your device and data.
A strong network firewall will give you a sense of relief as you’ll know that cybercriminals won’t be able to bypass your network security.
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Use a Quality VPN
After using anti-malware & antivirus software and a network firewall, comes the crucial need for using a quality VPN. Using a quality VPN throughout is no doubt one of the best and most effective ways to stay safe online. From time to time, it’s seen that cybercriminals intercept cyber traffic and tend to steal sensitive data.
Hence, y using a strong VPN, you can encrypt your traffic and makes it impossible for anyone to read your traffic or steal sensitive data. Again, make sure that you avoid using random VPNs and go for quality ones especially, those that offer 256-bit AES encryption.
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Use Strong Passwords
From social media to big organizations, weak passwords emerges as being the number one reason for the vast majority of data breaches as well as identity theft cases. Whenever you’re making passwords, make sure that you keep them as strong and unique as possible.
We would suggest that you go for passwords that are unique strings of at least 12 characters. Next, you should go for using a nice mix of alphabets, numbers, and special characters together while forming passwords.
If you ask us then unguessable, strong, and ideal passwords should look something like this: (3F3c23!#$Zfe345). We understand that such passwords are not that easy to remember, and hence, you can always write them down somewhere safe.
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Use Multi-factor Authentication
Nowadays, just having strong passwords is not enough. It has become quite a necessity to go one step ahead and set up multi-factor authentication, also known as two-factor authentication.
Well, these days, almost every platform lets you secure your accounts and data through multi-factor authentication. Even if cybercriminals get their hands on your login credentials by any chance, such authentication would still not give them access to your account.
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Be Regular with Back-Ups
Having a backup plan for important data in place is one of the parts of cyber hygiene. In case, at any given point in time, there’s a data breach, a backup can save the day. Doing a backup of important data at regular intervals in an offline drive or secure cloud storage is a great practice o improve cyber hygiene.
Hence, you can be relieved knowing the fact that you can always continue core business operations with minimal disruption even after any data breach or ransomware attack.
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Delete Files & Sensitive Data Properly
There are often times when we feel the need to retire an old device. Hence, it becomes very crucial to ensure that there is not any sensitive or any kind of data left on the device you’ve stopped using.
These days, simply moving files or even permanently deleting files isn’t sometimes enough. We would suggest that you reformat your hard drive and as the next step, wipe it clean with data-wiping software.
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Protect Your Wi-Fi Router
As you may or may not know, your Wi-Fi router is the ultimate gateway to your network. Due to this, anyone having access to your router can also have the access to other devices on the network.
Hence, you should always make sure that your Wi-Fi Router is properly secured to prevent any kind of threats.
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Update Software Regularly
Most people don’t realize or pay enough attention, but outdated software is a big security risk. Security updates are very important for your devices, and hence, older versions of applications give cybercriminals an easy chance to breach security and disrupt cyber hygiene.
We would suggest that you keep updating your device and all the apps & software at regular intervals. This will endure that you have the most advanced protection and help you prevent any kind of vulnerabilities.
Final Thoughts
So, with all these said, we come to the end of this post on ‘Why is Cyber Hygiene Important For Businesses. We would suggest that you follow the aforementioned checklist at regular intervals to improve your cyber hygiene. We’re sure that after reading this post and practicing the aforementioned ways for a few months, you’ll have your cyber hygiene on point. You’ll reach your cyber hygiene goals in no time.
Last but not least, we would like to highlight one point that be it antimalware software, antivirus software, network firewall, VPN, etc. you should not go for any random ones.
We suggest you not go for just any random options available in the market. Instead, we suggest you go for the ones that are highly reputed, trusted, and have good ratings & reviews.