The data on your devices like smartphones, laptops, tablet and other digital devices can be protected using various methods. 2022 brings with it various impressive technologies for data protection. It is the individual’s responsibility to understand why protecting your data on any device is necessary and how to do that effectively.
What Happens If Your Devices Are Not Protected?
Lack of awareness about data protection on smartphones and laptops might lead to various forms of data theft. Imagine you lose your smartphone and it falls into some notorious criminal’s hand. Your contact data, friends’ phone numbers, family images and numerous other things fall into their hands.
- Criminals might use the images to blackmail you and your loved ones or use them for unwanted purposes.
- They might misuse your phone, call your contacts and cheat them under your name.
- Use the personal data in your mobile to do unwanted shopping, steal money, misuse your email details, etc.
The same is applicable to all your technology starting from tablets to laptops and all other digital devices that have personal and private data about you. Failing to protect them properly is like handing out all your details willingly to be misused.
How to Protect Your Devices?
Start with protecting your mobile phones through proper bio identification. Ensure it can be opened only by your thumbprint or face scan. If you store important details in your phone, keep them in separate folders with a password protector.
- Use a password manager in your smartphone to make all your passwords complex and hard to crack.
- Install a proper antivirus and malware protection package in your smartphone and use it regularly to weed out unwanted downloads.
- Do not download any apps from unknown sources into your phone as you don’t know what they track in the background.
- If possible, have a spare phone for fun downloads and gaming and keep your professional phone protected with just the necessary apps for banking, finance and work.
- Ask about theft protection and data loss when you buy your smartphone and take the necessary insurance. Learn the procedure to lock or erase data on your particular handset if it is lost when you buy the phone.
- Don’t overshare personal details, passwords, antivirus software details, etc. You might get some calls or emails stating that your device has some issues and you need to pay money or provide some sensitive info like passwords to work on that. But you should always do your own research before sharing any sensitive data. If that’s a person calling you, check them on Nuwber and see whether they haven’t lied about who they are. If that’s some establishment, look for them on the internet to see if they really exist and they have these contacts.
Make regular backups of the data you store in the phone. If the phone is lost, you can still get access to your data from the backup even if you delete it in the lost phone itself. The thieves won’t get access to your data even if the device is lost if you erase the data. (Such features are available in most high-end mobiles and the procedure to lock data in the lost phone varies according to each company.)
The same rule is applicable to all your digital data devices. It is wise to make a backup of all your data in an external device or simply store them in the cloud.
If your laptop or other digital device is lost, use services like DriveStrike. Install the software in your digital devices for extra safety. If your device is stolen, you can perform the following actions by logging into the company page.
- Wipe data from your device completely from a remote location
- Activate encryption to prevent others from accessing your data
- Track the location of the device and try to retrieve the device.
Such services are extremely helpful for professionals who store lots of information on their system or those who lose their professional laptops with all the important details.
Make the Right Investment
When you buy a digital device like a laptop or a smartphone, ensure you buy good antivirus software along with it. Also, invest in good encryption software or custom data protection software if it is a work laptop.
Some security software (Absolute, NinjaOne) is capable of erasing the hard drive of your laptop completely if it is stolen, a wrong password is entered or if the multi-level authentication fails. Select a service based on the nature of the data you store in the digital device and your personal needs.
If the data stored is highly sensitive in nature and confidential, take costlier precautions to add an extra layer of security to the digital devices. If it is a simple device, used for fun, install the basic security package like Norton and use it responsibly to avoid common malware or ransomware attack.
Home Devices Protection
It is always wise to use a secured internet connection and keep your home router protected with the right password. Remember, all the digital devices at your home are linked to one another and the data from one device can be easily accessed by the other one.
A hacker can collect data regarding your favorite playlist on Amazon and proceed to find out what language you speak, your music preferences, your geolocation, etc in a fraction of a second. There is no privacy in the contemporary world and a thousand eyes pry on you every minute you are connected to the world wide web.
It is important to do your best to protect your devices that have the core details about you by
- Keeping their settings private
- Using complex passcodes to access them and
- Changing the passwords frequently
- Using a VPN, ad blockers and cookie blockers and using masking devices to hide details about you. Explore options like Disconnect, uBlock Origin and Avast tracker to keep your laptop safe from tracking.
- Check Ghostery, Privacy Badger and other apps and determine how far they are necessary to protect your daily activities. Keep all important data in password-protected files with a good backup in an external device.
Conclusion
Data protection on devices is not a complex task if you take the right measures and are aware of the issues that will arise due to negligence.
Ask yourself whether you have taken all the necessary steps to stay protected in case of theft or breach of the device. If you feel you are lacking somewhere, make sure to take extra steps today. Remember, a stitch in time saves nine. The steps you take today are the basis of your overall online protection for years to come.