Data Privacy

Data security means protecting data, such as a database, from destructive forces, and from the unwanted actions of unauthorized users. Wikipedia

What can you do?

  • Passwords
  • Virus scanner
  • Backups
  • Encryption
  • Data erasure

Passwords

Passwords are used to provide users personal rights to alter data and to keep the data safe from unauthorized use. You should have unique passwords for every location you need one. As a rule of thumb an password should be at least 6 characters long and contain digits and special characters like "$\/_-,". Passwords are used for e-mail, Online Banking, PC-Profiles, etc.

Virus scanner

Virus scanners watch the traffic betwen the computer and the internet and scan the computer for viruses to make sure no destructive content can enter or start programs without permisson. Virus scanners are restricted on already known viruses, this means a new created virus can easiely enter without the user noticing.

Backups

To make sure that in case of an hard drive failure you don't loose any important data you should regularyly create backups. The best practice is to save this data on an independent storage medium. In the worst case scenario you will still have access to the backuped data.

Encryption

With the help of encryption you can effectively protect your data. It is done with the help of extremely complicated algorithms which asure that nobody other than the owner of the key(you) can view the encrypted data.

Safe data erasure

Deleted files can be restored with various programs. This could be good or bad because some stranger has the ability to get posible sensible data. To avoid this you can just overwrite the file several times and nobody is able to get that data.