With encryption, you protect your data from snooping eyes – even if your device is stolen or your cloud account is hacked.
Most likely, you are storing all kinds of sensitive information on your PC or smartphone. Maybe even in the cloud. And as the security-conscious Internet user, you have likely secured access to your devices with a passphrase, a biometric key, or even a mixture of both. That’s all well and good, but what if you lose your device or it is stolen? In this case, encryption provides additional protection.
Of course, encryption isn’t just limited to your data storage. You should also encrypt your communications, web traffic, and passwords. In fact, it is the best practice for protecting your private information. However, a survey on the subject of encryption from 2018 showed that many users have only a low level of awareness of the importance of encryption. Time to do something about it. In this article, let’s look at a few ways to do this.
Full disk encryption
Most computers today have removable hard drives that are not permanently soldered to the motherboard. Many users also use external hard drives or USB sticks as additional storage. For this reason, full hard drive encryption is an excellent additional layer of security.
If your hard drive has been misplaced or stolen, then no one can access the information it contains. The hard drive is fully encrypted, including all of your data, software, and the operating system you run on it. If you don’t enter the key correctly during the boot process, your computer is essentially just an expensive paperweight.
There are various solutions for hard disk encryption for all common operating systems, from built-in functions to open source projects and commercial solutions with extended features.
There is also a corresponding functionality in smartphones and tablets, device encryption. It is integrated into current devices and activated by default. It is easy to discover tutorials that explain where to find device encryption on Android or iOS devices. And also, how to check it and enable it if necessary.
Cloud encryption
The use of Cloud storage is by most people today due to its easy accessibility. All you need is an internet connection. Unfortunately, simplicity doesn’t mean security by a long way. Over the years, cloud storage services have encountered many security vulnerabilities, either due to human error or targeted attacks. Therefore, encrypting your files before uploading them to the cloud should be a matter, of course.
Even if the data is stolen or the cloud provider system is compromised, it is then useless for thieves because they do not have the key to decrypt it.
If you want to encrypt your data for the cloud, you can choose from a variety of free and paid products, depending on your requirements. Make sure that the products offer at least AES encryption.
Encrypt your passwords
If you don’t want to (or can’t) remember all of your passwords because you don’t want to reuse them, you will be happy to use password managers. A password manager acts as a secure vault in which it stores all your passwords in encrypted form. All I have to do is remember a master password.
Most cloud-based password services store a copy of your password vault very well encrypted on their servers and allow users additional security via multi-factor authentication (MFA). This is a much more secure method of password storage than on post, unencrypted documents on your computer, or a “one-password strategy.”
Conclusion
Never underestimate the value of thorough protection of your digital existence! Even if the number of necessary measures seems high at first glance, you should implement as many of them as possible. It is better to be careful now than suddenly to be left bitter.