Yes, that said swEAt, not swEEt. If you think there is anything sweet about cyber-security you haven’t been in it long enough. The good news is the Australian government came up with a very short list of key strategies for cyber-security best practices. This is straight from Marc Goodman’s book Future Crimes.
- Application white listing – only allow specifically authorized programs to run on your system and block all unknown executable files and installation routines. Doing so prevents malicious software and harmful applications from running.
- Patch all your devices’ applications by automatically running software updates for programs such as MS Office, Java, PDF viewers, FLash, and Browsers.
- Patch operating system (OS) vulnerabilities by automatically updating your OS such as Windwos, Mac, iOS, or Android, ensuring you are using the very latest fully updated operating system at all times.
- Restrict administrative privileges on your computer and spend the majority of your time logged in as a basic user such as when e-mailing and web browsing. Only log in as admin to your own machine when you need to, such as to install new software or make system changes. Doing so deprives adversaries of the admin privileges they often need to install malware and rummage through your network.
If you haven’t read Future Crimes learn more at www.futurecrimes.com or order it from Amazon.
And remember, cyber-security is about defend and detect. Try your best to defend your data but be prepared for a breach and reduce the mean-time to detection so you prevent the loss of important data.