In today’s world almost everything we do from paying bills to sharing pictures of our children is done online.  Just think about how many times you grab your phone for something other than making a call each day.  What about applying for a loan or a credit card?  Instead of filling out a form and mailing it in or going to a bank most people are doing these things from a computer, tablet, or their phones.  This can leave you vulnerable to having your account information, social security number, and a ton of other personally identifiable information stolen.  This stolen information can lead to an empty bank account, inability to get a loan or credit card, and even to you losing your home. There is no 100% sure way to secure your information (other then cutting yourself off completely from the internet) but there are steps everyone can and should take to protect themselves.

Personal Information Definition: 

Personal information is anything ranging from the files on your computer to banking information. Personal Information Security is just one of many terms that are used when discussing securing your personal data. Security is very important if you do not want your personal information or identity stolen. Securing your personal information is not a simple process. Not only do you need to protect your digital data, but you need to protect your physical items such as your computers, and credit cards. 

Computer

I worked as an IT Consultant for many years before taking my current position running an IT department.  During that time, I would often find myself at the home of one of my client’s executives or working on their personal laptops.  One of the biggest security lapses I would run across is no password or a very bad password to log on to the computer. The first step in securing your personal information is securing your computer.  The first thing you should do is set a good password for your log in. None of this password1234 crap, using birthdays, or names with a couple of numbers at the end. A password should not be a word found in a dictionary. (even if replacing E with 3 it is still a word) A good password is a collection of random characters between eight and fifteen characters long that includes both upper-case, lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols such as the @ sign. Another good practice is to not use the same password for more than one site, and to change the password every thirty to ninety days. I know you’re probably thinking “that’s too many passwords to remember”, or “I can’t come up with that many passwords”. There are many password manager applications out there that you can use to both store passwords and generate new passwords. Apple has its Key Chain built into IOS and MacOS. Google Chrome will also ask to store passwords. I do not recommend storing your passwords in a browser, but it is an option. I use LastPass myself. The next step is to use an antivirus program and keep it up to date. There are many antivirus products available for reasonable prices. Most Internet providers such as Spectrum, and AT&T will even provide it to their customers free of charge. I personally use Sophos home on all my computers. Sophos offers a free version for up to three computers. Or you can purchase a premium version for $50/yr that will protect up to ten computers. Next you should keep your computer up to date.  Turn on automatic updates on your computer and approve the updates when prompted. To take it a step further you can enable hard disk encryption.  While there are third party programs that can be used Windows has it’s BitLocker built in and MacOS has its file vault built in.   The reason I suggest using drive encryption is because it is a fairly simple process to remove a hard drive and use a cheap device to then access the drive directly bypassing the password to get at stored data.  I have personally purchased these devices from the local Microcenter for around $15 over the years to recover data after a system failure.

Online accounts

Online accounts are anything from banking websites you use to your Facebook account. 

Social Media

First let’s talk a little bit about social media accounts. People just love to post all kinds of personal information from check-ins to pictures of their dogs on their social media pages. Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with this. That is what these sites are for after all. The thing that you must understand is that the information you put on these sites is often an answer to a security question used to reset a password on say for example your banks website. There are people out there that specialize in identity theft. One of the tricks they use is to review social media posts to gather personal information on a target. With this information they are a step closer to hacking into the targets bank accounts, email accounts, etc. 

Making your profile, and the things you post private will keep strangers from seeing your information while still allowing you to share those pictures of your grand kids with the friends and family members you are connected to on the site. Each site has their own privacy settings. You’ll have to look up how to make your stuff private based on the site you use. Once you have made your account private be careful of who you connect with.  My Facebook account is set to private, but I still get requests to connect from people I do not know on a regular basis.  I am not sure how the request process works on other sites but on Facebook when I get a request there is an area that lists mutual friends. However just because you friend is connected to them does not mean it is a good idea to allow them to see your page.  My suggestion is to reject requests to connect from anyone you do not personally know.

Banking, Amazon, Email accounts, etc.

Again, with these sites you should adhere to the password suggestions I gave in the computer section. Other than the password suggestions you should also use an updated browser that includes features like HTTPS everywhere. Google Chrome, and Firefox both support this. Another thing to consider is using a personal VPN. There are tons of company’s out there that sell personal VPN products. I personally use NordVPN when I do any online banking. The VPN make a secure connection to a server hosted by the company that produces the VPN.  This server encrypts the connection from your computer to the server to securely route your internet traffic and serve up webpages.  This is an extra step to ensure your communication is not intercepted by a third party.  As an added bonus for the paranoid among us it prevents your internet provider from knowing what sites you are visiting on the web.

Data Files

Data files can be anything from a pdf of your tax return to pictures of your kids. Securing your data files depends on where you store them. Do you store them locally on your desktop/laptop computer? Do you store them on a flash drive or in the cloud? Do you have more than one copy? If you are using the drive encryption built into your computer these files are fairly secure.  If you are using a service like Microsoft’s OneDrive, Dropbox, or Apple’s iCloud they are only as secure as the account used to access them.  I tend to get tired of looking at Windows after working all day so I use a Mac for my personal computing needs.  As a result, I use Apple’s iCloud which utilizes end to end encryption and all Apple ID’s are required to use 2 factor authentication. 

Backup

What is probably the most important step in securing you data is to make sure you are backing it up. There are many ways to achieve this either automatically or manually.  You could do it manually by copying files to an external hard drive.  However, then you have to remember to do it when you change a file or create new ones.  You also must remember where you put the drive last time you used it.  Both Windows and MacOS both have built in options that you can use to schedule backups that will store the backups on an external hard drive or to a network attached storage (NAS) device. There are also third-party products that can be used to back up the data either locally to a USB drive or to online storage such as Carbonite. I use the built in Time Machine on my mac that backs up my data to Synology NAS device.

Use something other than the products I use? Did I miss something. Let me know in the comments below.