Basic security for the internet user
To help you on your journeys through cyber space, I will pepper this article with some handy links. There is a bit of overlap in the linked articles, but each have something very good in them worth reading through. It does not hurt to read some of this twice anyway as these things tend to be overlooked and forgotten by most people.
TL;DR
The short main points below for those who may not want to read all of the linked guides. Though I stress that the guides have much more good advice in them, including suggestions for answers to some of these.
- Know what you are protecting and from what kind of threats
- Keep software updated
- Use different passwords for each service, maybe with help from a password manager.
- Use multi-factor-authentication (MFA) to make hacking your accounts more difficult.
- Evaluate which companies and software you can trust
- Encrypt communication and data at rest
- Always keep up to date backups of your devices, so you can recover form faults and attacks
On to the articles and guides..
Wired has a very good article that gives advice on how to encrypt all the things. Including links to tools and even covering encrypting data at rest. Encrypting important data can also help when you need to upload things to cloud storage. Less need to trust the cloud if your data is encrypted by default.
Similarly and a bit more comprehensively the EFF has their Surveillance Self Defence pages with various articles on encrypting your communications and avoiding digital intrusions. Both articles cover several good solutions for encrypting your messages, storage and emails etc. The SSD has more advice on how to evaluate your threat level and risks.
At the risk of repeating content, I have to also plug Motherboard's guide to not getting hacked online. These are all good collections of tools and tips on how to be safe and secure online. The EFF guide gets special mention for explaining why privacy and security are important and also offering a guide to make a personal security plan. Which I think at least all companies should do, even if it's disguised as Friday after work.
MOTHERBOARD STAFF
The Guide to Not Getting Hacked, also gives good info on IoT security and the importance of managing passwords carefully. They also cover SIM jacking, an attack that is undermining many services that use SMS of phone calls for Multi-Factor-Authentication (MFA). This gives the reader a good overview on how to handle credentials and secure their accounts.
No advice is complete without the famous password comic from XKCD.
