Tech Talks Today

How Do You Secure Your Data?

Are You Doing Anything About It Or Just Winging It?

Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash

Let’s get one thing straight. No device or application is 100% safe or secure. Code, the same as humans, is flawed. There is always something more. A developer or an engineer, or even a team of them, will always miss something.

There will always be at least someone that will test the system. Either out of pure curiosity or, worse, for profit. Fortunately, that allows us to improve systems even further.

It also allows us to develop additional layers of security. Passwords can be speculated, or easily brute-forced. Doing a few other things can considerably improve the chances of your data not being stolen.

Let’s start simple.

Use the Same Password Everywhere. NO!

Please Don’t! I know it’s easy to remember one or two passwords, but don’t fall into that trap. You likely have an account on at least half a dozen social networking sites, a dozen shopping sites, and the list can move on. If your password somehow leaks or gets hacked, it is easy for that hacker to gain all your information and data. The fun times only begin after that.

My recommendation is to have complex passwords or keyphrases, longer than the minimum required for any specific site, and if possible different for each app/site.

Save Passwords or Remember Passwords?

Ideally, remember all, as it is still kind of hard for someone’s mind to get hacked. Still, if you’re like me and have hundreds of passwords to remember, it is kind of hard to keep track of all of them.

Password managers to the rescue. Open source and locally stored instances are the best options.

I use KeePass and also host my Bitwarden container on my local server. If you don’t have a server, you can host it in the cloud, for Bitwarden, I mean.

Also, if you don’t have a home server, you should think about building one.