10 Best Practices for Safe Computing

I came across this list on the UC Santa Cruz website.  Its a great list of best practices, so I thought I would share them.

1.) Use cryptic passwords that can be easily guessed - and protect your passwords.  This is essential.  The first line of defense for your sensitive information, etc, is your password.   Adding complexity to your password or pass-phrase increases the work it takes to crack by an exponential factor.  I would also have to add, to use multiple passwords for different services.  Don't let your online banking password be the same as the password you check your email with, etc.  That way when  you lose one password, the attacker doesn't get into everything.  Its risk management 101.

2.) Be cautious when using the internet.  There are tons of bots, trojans, and keystroke loggers that can be installed via the web browser without you knowing it.  Make sure that you are only visiting sites that you know, or are run by companies you trust.

3.) Practice Safe Emailing - Don't open attachments from folks you don't know, or really from folks that you do know without confirming they meant to send it to you.  This is taken care of mostly by mail clients and AV software today, however we are about due for the next rendition of the I Love You virus.

4.) Secure your area before leaving it unattended.  Don't leave things out with sensitive information.  If you must, lock the door.

5.) Secure your laptop computer at all times.  This means every time you walk away, you lock the console.

6.) Shutdown, lock, log off, or put your computer to sleep before leaving it unattended, and make sure it requires a password to start up or wake up.

7.) Make sure that you have AntiVirus, and the latest patches for your operating system installed.  New patches are available on almost a weekly basis for most operating systems.  You don't want to leave a well documented whole open in your defenses.

8.) Keep critical information in more than one place.  A hard disk failure can be catastrophic if you haven't backed up that thesis paper, or the materials for your major project.

9.) Don't install unknown applications on your machine.  This is pretty self explanatory.

10.) Secure the backups of your data.  Use encryption.  Put tapes into a safe deposit box.

The full list can be found at http://its.ucsc.edu/security_awareness/top10.php