In this video, we're going to talk about securing your data.
We're going to discuss multi-factor authentication, what it is, how it works.
We're going to discuss data encryption, what should you be doing there, and also how to
secure and protect your passwords.
Good day Dan, how are you?
Good, Tim.
So let's talk about securing your data.
Encryption, of course, when it works against you that's a terrible thing.
But what's a good strategy for using encryption to protect and secure your data?
So, encryption is a perfectly valid tool to be able to secure business data from people
that you don't wanna access it.
So, we normally say to people, if your sending your data outside of the company whether that's
emailing it out, or whether it's sending data out on a USB drive giving it to somebody,
it's good to put a password on it.
So, I'm not talking about putting passwords on every single email that you send out, but
if that data that you've got in that email contains photos of a particularly sensitive
area in the business or it may contain financial documents.
It's a really good idea to encrypt it with a password.
So, how do you actually do that?
Does the email software have a function and being able to do that?
There's some simple ways you can encrypt your data.
Firstly, if you're going to copy the data onto a USB drive and take it to another computer,
you can simply just right click on the files and go to the encryption part of Windows 10
and type in a password to encrypt it, and that will then lock the file down encrypted.
Let's just stop there for a second.
Does anyone even know there's an encryption part of Windows 10?
So what's the option?
You right click on a file, and what are you might looking for?
Ah yes.
So, you can right click on the file, go to Properties and go to Encryption.
And you are able to encrypt that file.
So, there's other ways you can encrypt the file.
Particularly if you're then gonna email it, you would use a product like WinZip or one
of the Zip programs to be able to not only compress the file but also to put a password
or end it encrypted.
And of course you don't wanna then put the password in the email itself.
Do you phone it through, you text it, what's the best way?
Either way, just get the password to the destination via different method rather than emailing
it with the file.
Smoke signals, and semaphore.
Something like that.
Alright, good.
So, you can actually encrypt through Windows, you can encrypt through something like WindowsZip,
and you should do that for sensitive information that's being transmitted, what about just
the information sitting on a hard drive on your machine.
Should that be somehow encrypted or just that's okay if it's local?
So, if the files are sitting on the hard drive on your machine, there's different ways on
the network to encrypt the data.
And again, we would generally say that you would password-protect it.
So Windows does allow for password-protecting when you type in your password when you've
logged on to the computer.
That's generally good enough security for those files.
Okay.
But certainly, you would need to encrypt it, if that information is sensitive and you wanna
take it away from the office.
That's the point when you wanna encrypt it.
Okay, good.
Let's talk about multi-factor authentication.
This is something else again, but part of securing your data.
What is that, and how does it work?
Multi-factor authentication has been around for a long time, but it's one of these security
products which isn't used very widely.
And we believe it should be.
So multi-factor authentication simply is just putting in another password once you've typed
in your first password.
So, you type in your username, you type in your standard password and then you might
type in a 6-digit numeric character which changes every 3 to 5 minutes.
Right.
So you get these numbers which pop-up on your mobile phone, you have to type in that 6-digit
code at exactly the same time you type in your password.
And that's multi-factor authentication.
Just bringing another factor to authenticate you into your network.
Okay good.
And where should you be using this?
My understanding for example is you can turn this on, I'm trying to remember if it's accounting
software or something, you can sort of turn this on but it's often left off and so people
don't even know that it's possible.
Because cyber security is becoming a lot more prominent these days, you see a lot more software
companies wanting to turn it on.
So, a good example is Xero, which is financial accounting software in the cloud.
Xero has just mandated that all their users have to use multi-factor authentication.
So, username, password and another factor of authentication to be able to get into their
financial data.
That's becoming more and more common not just for accounting software but for people that
just wanna access their documents and even their photos and things like that.
Alright good.
That makes a lot of sense.
So basically do that anywhere, anywhere you possibly can, you should be using MFA?
Yeah, we believe it's one these products that if we use MFA a lot more, it will stop the
likelihood of hackers trying to connect in and steal your data.
So, use it as much as possible.
And use it as frequently as possible.
Okay. Good.
So, we talked about having a password, and then a second factor.
Let's talk about the passwords themselves.
Typically, people remember them, you hope, or write them down on little yellow post-it
and stick it underneath the keyboard or something.
What's the best way to protect your password.
How can you secure your password?
There's a couple of ways, using technology, there's certainly password programs out there
which will help you to remember your password and they can store that password securely
and encrypt that password locally.
So that whenever you wanna go into your banking software or your financial software, that
password comes up automatically and it's secure and it's relevant to you and you only.
So you can use password programs like LastPass, and there's a whole bunch of password authentication
programs out there.
With regard to writing your password down, you know, 10, 15 years ago when the biggest
threat was somebody breaking into your house
or breaking in the office and stealing your data
that way, we use to say to people never write your passwords down.
Unfortunately, the biggest threat now is somebody coming in on the end of a wire.
So, they're not necessarily gonna see the password that's written under the keyboard.
In the last few years I've changed maintain, I've said to people, if you need to write
your password under your keyboard to help to remind you what it is, then so be it.
Maybe they'll write the whole password, maybe just write something that remind you what
your password is.
That makes a lot of sense.
So, the beginning maybe the end and then some dashes or dots, or something in the middle
that you have to actually remember at least a little bit a part of it.
That's right.
But, probably don't write your password into a file called "Password" and sit on your desktop
of the computer.
Any other tips when it comes to securing your data?
Passwords, multiple-factor authentication, and encryption.
They're three of the things which are simple to use.
They're in a lot of cases, free or very low cost and they should be used a lot more.
Alright. Thanks very much.
For those of you who'd like to find out more or perhaps ask questions of Dan and his team,
please find us online at sabervox.com.au