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10 things to do to help secure your data

Here are 10 tips to assist you in securing your data.

1) Back up early and often – do it, as you are working as well as the end of the day.

2) Use file-level and share-level security – This helps keeps others away from your data.

3) Password-protect documents – Many programs allow this, but while it may be at times easy to crack, idle eyes won’t have the time to do it.

4) Use EFS encryption – EFS uses a combination of asymmetric and symmetric encryption, for both security and performance. To encrypt files with EFS, a user must have an EFS certificate, which can be issued by a Windows certification authority or self-signed if there is no CA on the network.

5) Use disk encryption – Whole disk encryption locks the entire disk, but can be transparent to the user, once the password is entered. Since removable devices may be easily misplaced or lost it’s a good idea to always use this on removable disks.

6) Make use of a public key infrastructure – A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for managing public/private key pairs and digital certificates.

7) Hide data with steganography – You can use a steganography program to hide data inside other data. Example: hide a text file inside a graphic or music file.

8) Protect data in transit with IP security – Your data can be captured while it’s traveling over the network by a hacker with sniffer software (also called network monitoring or protocol analysis software).

9) Secure wireless transmissions – Data that you send over wireless is more subject to interception than that sent over a wired Ethernet network.

10) Use rights management to retain control – You can use Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) to control what the recipients are able to do with the data they receive.

© 2006-2007 Steven G. Atkinson – All Rights Reserved – Technology Tips for Small Business

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