When you think of the word hygiene, the first thing you think about probably isn’t cyber security. However, when you run a company, digital hygiene is incredibly important.
Whether you run a small business or an entire hospital system, keeping your company safe and secure online should be one of your top priorities. Let’s go over the top four tips to improve digital hygiene so you and your company can stay safe online.
1. Keep All of Your Devices Updated
Again, whether your operation is big or small, it’s important to keep all of your devices updated. That includes updating to the latest device software, updating all accounts, and updating all apps.
Another part of updating your devices is deleting old accounts. If you have old employee accounts that aren’t used anymore, deleting them is a big step towards better digital hygiene.
You should also routinely delete old apps or business accounts to online services you don’t use anymore. The less you have your business information spread around on old accounts, the better.
2. Stay Secure With Multiple Passwords
It’s easy to set one password for devices and accounts that you can give to all of your employees to use. However, the more you reuse the same password across multiple platforms, the more you put yourself at risk for a cyber attack.
Create unique passwords for every device, account, and login, and change them regularly. This is crucial when it comes to keeping your data safe.
3. Remove Old Data From Your Devices and Hard Drives
Just like we said with deleting old accounts, deleting old data is also important for your digital hygiene. It’s easy to let data collect dust on a device or hard drive and never deal with it.
However, having data just sitting there is another way to open yourself up to a cyber attack. Hackers are looking for data, particularly unused data, to steal your information from. The more old and unused data you have sitting around, the less noticeable it will be when a hacker gets ahold of it.
Routinely go through all of your devices and hard drives to clean them up. Permanently delete old data that you don’t need anymore, and keep the remaining data organized and easy to access.
4. Increase Your Security Methods
These days, the best way to protect yourself against a cyber attack is to have multiple lines of defense. That includes antivirus software, a firewall, and an intrusion detection system.
When you have multiple forms of security systems working on your behalf, your digital safety increases drastically.
The Best Practices for Digital Hygiene
When it comes to digital hygiene, the most important thing to remember is that you have to stay on top of it. If you let a few weeks or months go by without updating your devices, clearing out old data, or changing your passwords, you and your business will become more vulnerable to an attack.
Additionally, having multiple layers of protection through security programs will work in your favor. Learn how to protect your company before security becomes a problem with solutions from Pegasus Technologies here.
Pegasus Technologies is the IT Team for organizations that don’t need a full-time IT department. Our technology experts build you a technology plan to keep your business running at its best. We have offices in Kennett Square, PA, Media, PA, and Wayne, PA to provide better computer support and IT services to you.
