5 Ways to Secure Your Data and Information

As more and more of your data is stored digitally on computers and servers all over the world, the more important it is to keep as much of that data locked down. Hackers are stealing credit card numbers and bank account numbers on a daily basis and stealing someone’s identity is about as easy as learning how to drive. For some data, there isn’t much you can do.
For example, if your bank’s servers get hacked, there’s not much you can do if they get your account numbers and withdraw money. Luckily, if someone like that happens with a big company, they’ll take the hit and you won’t lose any of your own money.

For data that you have stored locally on your computer or on an external device, it’s important to make sure that you either don’t store anything sensitive on it or if you do, then to make sure it’s well protected. In this article, I’ll go through five steps you can take to help better protect yourself and your data from hackers and scammers.

Step 1 – Encrypt Your Data

You hear about encryption every day, but it seems that no one really does it. I have asked all my friends about encryption and not a single one has actually encrypted the data on their computers or external hard drives. And these are people who do practically everything online from paying taxes to ordering food to reading the newspaper. The single most important thing you can do is encrypt your data. It’s not a very hard process on Windows or Mac and once you do it the first time, you really don’t have to do anything again.
Here’s an article I wrote back in 2007 that still applies today. It’s about how to encrypt your hard drive using a program called TrueCrypt, which is free and still one of the most popular programs for encrypting data. What about encrypting a flash drive? I’ve written about that too, 3 years ago! You can also use TrueCrypt to encrypt a flash drive or external storage device.
Encrypting your data ensures that if someone were to get a hold of your computer or external drive, they would not be able to simply plug it in and view all your files. Without knowing your password to log into the system, they could not access any of the data stored on the drive. Which brings me to the second point.

Step 2 – Use Strong Passwords

Of course, encryption won’t be worth anything if someone can simply turn on your computer and brute-force attack the login until they get the correct password. Using a strong password that is long and that is a combination of numbers, symbols and letters makes it really hard for someone to crack that password using a brute force attack. Of course, there are other ways to bypass passwords altogether, but there are things you can do to get around that problem, which I’ll write about later.
I’ve previously written about 4 free online tools you can use to generate strong passwords. Also, read my 5 tips for creating strong passwords. A lot of people tell me that they don’t use such strong passwords because they can never remember them and then they end up having to reset it over and over again. I agree, that’s a problem. That’s why I use LastPass, which is an online and offline password manager that is super secure. You can store the passwords for all your websites and accounts and access them from your smartphone or computer easily.

Step 3 – Two Factor Authentication

So there is one problem with encryption and strong passwords and that is that they can still be hacked if someone can sniff out your password while it’s being sent across the Internet. For example, let’s say you’re at a coffee shop and connected to the wireless network there, which is probably insecure. If you log into a website that is not using SSL (https in the address bar), a hacker could sniff your password while it’s being sent across the Wifi network.
So how do you protect yourself there? Well firstly, you never do anything sensitive while on a insecure wireless network or public Wifi network. It’s just too risky. Secondly, you can use two factor authentication. This basically means that you need a password and another piece of information to log into the website or service.
Google has 2 step verification that is simply awesome. It basically makes your entire Google account hack-proof. Why? Well, even if someone gets your super strong Google password, they won’t be able to access anything until they can also get the 6-digit code that is generated every 30 seconds and that you can only see on your smartphone. Essentially, they would have to get your password and your phone and then they would be able to login. That reduces your chances of being hacked by a huge factor.
But what’s great is that there are lots of sites that use two-factor authentication. For example, the LastPass site I mentioned above works with Google Authenticator and therefore you don’t have to worry about all your passwords being protected by a single password. It’ll now be a password and code that only you have access to.
And check out Facebook Login Approvals. In order to login from a new device, Facebook will first send you a code to your phone and you have to enter that along with your password. Now your Facebook account can’t be hacked either.
And there’s more! Use Paypal? Well they have something called Paypal Security Key. Same concept, send you a text message with a  code that you can use to login. What about a WordPress blog? Well, you can use the Google Authenticator plugin to secure your websites from hackers.
Two factor authentication is simply unbeatable in terms of how easy it is to setup, yet how much more secure your data becomes. Check your favorite sites to see if they support two factor authentication.

Step 4 – Secure Your Network

The other major aspect of security you want to take into account is the network you are using for communication with the outside world. Is your home wireless network secure? Is it using WEP or WPA or WPA2? Are you regularly using insecure networks at hotels, airports, coffee shops?
The first thing you want to do is lock down your wireless network since that is probably where most of your computer activity takes place. You want to enable security and choose the highest possible security. Check out my article on which WiFi encryption protocol is best.
There are also a lot of other things you can do, such as:
- Disabling SSID Broadcast
- Enabling MAC Address Filteirng
- Enabling AP Isolation
You can read up online about these other types of security. The second thing you want to do (actually maybe the first) is change the username and password used to access your wireless router. So it’s great if you setup WPA2 with AES, but if someone just types in the IP address of your router and can login using the default username and password for the router (which can be found on the Internet in seconds), then they can actually change everything and lock you our of your own router!
Luckily, you can always reset your router and gain access, but it’s still very risky because someone can log into your router and then access everything else that is connected to your network. Logging into the router is nice because it can tell you all the clients connected to the router and their IP addresses. It’s never a good idea to buy a new wireless router, bring it home and just connect it up without setting up the security on it first.
Lastly, it’s definitely necessary to enable the firewall on your router and your computers. This will prevent applications from communicating on certain ports on your computer.

Step 5 – Antivirus Software

Again, you can do steps 1 thru 4, but it can all be useless if a virus or malware gets installed on your computer and someone can remotely control it or remotely transfer data from your computer to their servers. Antivirus is essential today and also good browsing habits.
I personally recommend Microsoft Security Essentials for Windows as it’s free and does a very good job of detecting viruses and malware. If you suspect you already have something, read my previous post on removing malware and spyware.
Implementing these five practices will greatly reduce your chances of being hacked and your data being stolen. There are still ways for hackers to get around even the most secure networks and encryption, but there’s no harm in making it really hard for them to do. What are your thoughts? How do you protect your digital data?