Basically stuffed

My wife works for Gartner and has just been at the annual security summit in Sydney Australia.

https://www.gartner.com/en/conferences/apac/security-risk-management-australia

While we chatted on the phone last night she told me how several of the (high profile) speakers pointed out that the biggest issue with computer security is that people are still not even "doing the basics".

"The basics" are things that I've spoken about often both here in this blog and in the real world with customers (face to face).

A lot of people are paranoid about computer security, hacking and global issues without having even attended to the basics in their own backyard.

The nature of my work means that often I am required to gain access to computers and networks where my customers have no recollection or record of usernames and passwords. You can't imagine how often and how easily I actually succeed in getting into these systems and networks.

I've been to businesses where vast numbers of the public pass through only to see "the password", because there's the same one used everywhere, sat in plain sight on a post it note on the side of the screen. OMG!

Here's a reasonable starter list from a university in the USA:

https://www.umass.edu/it/support/security/security-checklist-personal-computers

Here's another one:

That may seem like a lot of basics, and I'd argue there are more besides, but the fact is nothing you do will protect you more than attending to the basics.

I recommend you search through my earlier articles on related subjects (passwords, security, scams, backups etc.) and make sure you either have the basics covered or really don't care that one day you be hacked and/or lose all your data (and maybe money).

Or, give me a call and we can work through it together.

Good luck.

David