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Introduction to cyber security: stay safe online
Introduction to cyber security: stay safe online

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5 Summary of Week 7

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Figure 19

While most of this week’s learning is about how to recover from a disaster, it is worth spending a few minutes reminding yourself what can be done to minimise the risk of a breach in your security.

These relatively easy measures will greatly increase your computer and mobile device security and we have covered many of them over the past few weeks:

  • each user has their own personal accounts when using a computer which are not administrative accounts
  • use strong passwords (and perhaps a password manager application)
  • set your computer and mobile devices to require a login or passcode when you switch them on and when they lock after being left for a certain period
  • keep your operating system and key applications up to date
  • install antivirus software and keep it up to date
  • protect wireless networks using modern (e.g. WPA2) encryption
  • enable a personal firewall on your PC and a router firewall.

You could also take these measures, which might require some assistance, or if you are in a business environment, the approval of a system administrator:

  • encrypting your hard disk
  • encrypting folders that contain confidential files, or files that will be backed up to the cloud
  • using encrypted flash memory drives.

Look at the list of security measures above. Do you think any of them apply to you and your computer and mobile devices? Make a note of the security measures that apply to your situation and make some notes on how you could implement them.

You can now go to Week 8: Managing security risks [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .