How to Keep Your Data More Secure in 2022 🔒

How much information is considered too personal?

How comfortable would you be if anyone could access your full name, email address, home address, and phone number? What if your passwords or sensitive business documents were compromised?

The inherent danger of being on the internet and having an online presence, intentionally or unintentionally, is the risk of exposure. We’ve waved goodbye to another year, but there’s a dark shadow that’s still lingering — your personal data is at risk.

The Facts and The Stats

Last year, we saw big-name companies and giants in various industries suffer attacks by nefarious cybersecurity hackers. News outlets headlined a few that were compromised such as:

• Microsoft Exchange Server’s data breach in January that affected tens of thousands of businesses
• Facebook’s data breach in April of ~550 million Facebook users where personal information of names, date of birth, gender, locations, and relationships were exposed
• Coinbase’s data breach in October where unauthorized hackers stole user’s cryptocurrency

Remember, we’re only scratching the surface here. These cybersecurity attacks are just a handful of the thousands of attacks that occurred in 2021. Unfortunately, these attacks resulted in users losing millions of dollars and having their private details exposed to the dark web.

Reality Check

Now, not to start 2022 with a sense of paranoia, but it’s apparent that securing as much of our online data as possible is more important now than ever. The internet isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Facebook, Google, or any other titan in the tech industry.

Our digital lives are developing and evolving at a rapid rate. Wherever we go, we leave traces of our presence, digital footsteps that can be tracked and monitored. As we continue to use consumer apps, we need to have fundamental security tools under our belt to help us feel safer and more confident.

I’m going to share some insights on the importance of data security and show you exactly what you can do to securely store your online data.

Finding Solutions

One great method of securing our online data is encryption. Although we may not be able to encrypt everything we do online — oftentimes, we rely on the services we use to provide the necessary security protocols — we can secure the data stored in the files we save on our computers or upload on cloud storage services.

It’s important to note that it’s not only the cybersecurity hackers we should be aware of but also the company of the services we use as well. By using a service we, as users, agree to the company’s terms and service that often state they have full authorized access to anything we upload. This means that companies can view, use, and analyze any data we store from personal to business information. So in order to fully protect our data, we should encrypt our files before uploading to cloud storages like DropBox or Google Drive.

One useful and easy-to-use encryption tool is Cryptomator. It allows you to create an encrypted folder that you can then upload to your favorite cloud storage service.

Benefits of Cryptomator:

1. It encrypts data locally which prevents any data exposure in the off chance that your local computer is compromised.
2. It requires a master password to decrypt and view data.
3. You can safely upload locally encrypted data to cloud storage to prevent data exposure

Better Safe Than Sorry

So you’ve taken the leap and decided to tighten up your data security. Once you’ve downloaded Cryptomator, follow the installation instructions below:

After installing the application, create a Vault (this is a folder that will encrypt any data stored inside), select a storage method, and set a password.

After following the steps, accessing the created vaults will require a password as shown below:

What seems like a minor change can have a profound impact on your personal data security. This simple and easy-to-use tool helps to protect sensitive user information and keeps your details off the dark web.

I hope these tips have given you more insight on how to super-charge your personal data security measures going forward.

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Happy New Year! 🎉

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Cryptomator.

Also published here.