Best Practices start right now with the decision to take the measures necessary to protect your information. Your everyday habits may be your best defense, or may greatly increase your risk. Teaching yourself to recognize a potential vulnerability, and to act accordingly, is the best way to keep your information safe.
Good vs. Bad Habits-Make Security Routine:
It is easy, if not automatic, to look for shortcuts in our daily activities. From multitasking to prioritizing, we are always looking for a quicker and easier way to get things done. Unfortunately, sometimes this leads to lapses in security.
In a hurry and dropping off a package at the post office? Might as well leave the car running while you dash in, or at least the doors unlocked. After all, it's only going to take a moment or two.
The same can be said for leaving your desk to grab a report from the printer in the next room. It will take as much time to lock up the PC as it will to get the report.
At home, why bother creating separate accounts for everyone who uses the computer? It's all one family so why not just have everyone log in using the Administrator account? Why even bother to log in?
These "Why Bother?" types of questions come up every day. Often, we do lock our car doors, but remember that time you were in a big hurry and said "Why Bother"? While that may be an isolated incident, it is easy to let it grow into a bad habit. Since routine, repeated actions become habitual, better to foster good habits rather than negligent ones. If you ALWAYS lock the car door, put the parking brake on, and make sure the lights are off, then you won't have to ask yourself while standing in the check-out line, "Did I remember to lock the car?!"
The same holds true with your computer. Far better to foster good security habits than suffer doubts about whether the virus definitions are up-to-date, or the system was exposed while you were away from your desk longer that you planned.
Finally, it's much more obvious when your car is stolen than when your PC is sending out spam or participating in a distributed denial of service attack. Since a computer compromise is difficult to detect, it's much better to be bothered than to be a victim, or contribute to the victimization of other network users.
In this group of pages, you will find specific suggestions for good security behavior. We hope you take them to heart.
