First, let’s begin with the definition of hygiene.
All of us know about hygiene, what it is and so on. Google defines hygiene as, “conditions or practices conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease, especially through cleanliness.”
Now if we look at the Wikipedia definition it says: hygiene “is a series of practices performed to preserve health. According to WHO, Hygiene refers to conditions and practices that help to maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases”
All it is good and clear, but you may be asking yourself, what about Cyber Hygiene?
Definition of Cyber Hygiene
Cyber Hygiene should be maintained not only for individuals but also for organisations. For instance, some individuals/companies are hacked due to poor controls in certain areas such as patch, password and device management.
This is not new, it is not like this has never happened before, but the difference now is that this was not as much of an issue in the past because computers were not connected to the internet, and hacking techniques were not as advanced as they are today. Therefore, having a bad password while the computer was not connected to the Internet was not as big of a security risk as it is today.
Today there are still small, medium and big companies which do not know what they have. This means they may not know which computers are connected to their network and to the Internet. So how do you fix something that you don’t know you have? Or if it is even connected to your network?
Asset Inventory for Security
For that reason, you need a proper and accurate “Asset Inventory.” This is not limited to an inventory of which hardware is connected to the network but also what software are deployed.
Remember, visibility is your friend when it comes to security. If you don’t know what you don’t know….. then you have a problem. Once you know what you have, the next step is to set up some controls around that….. but first step first…
Let’s just take baby steps here. First, go and find all of the devices that are connected to your network. We will discuss later what to do with them, but for now begin creating your inventory.
More to come soon…
And as always, be safe out there until the next Malware Monday.
Your protection is top of mind. Contact us today and find out how our team can help you cyber secure your business and personal data.
