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Manila Bulletin devider Technews devider How to protect your data from unauthorized access

How to protect your data from unauthorized access

Published Sep 7, 2019 12:00 am

Fortinet Email Security

After years of developing technologies for different companies, I have gained inside information about corruption, crimes, and other inappropriate behavior by people who present themselves as legitimate business owners. I have evidence of these malicious activities as data on my devices. It’s quite apt and timely for me to share a recent personal experience on how far people can go to steal your information.

A few days ago, two armed men broke into my apartment and stole my cellphone and laptop. They were very specific about those two things seeing as that I had other more valuable stuff laying around the house like my GoPro, smartwatches and other valuable gadgets. It was an odd coincidence, knowing that it all had happened the night before a legal proceeding, where the other party is filing for a motion for reconsideration against the dismissal of my case.

As the internet has become more and more integral to our everyday lives, data are extremely valuable pieces of information. Any data that we own, such as personal information, customer records, online conversations, location data, among others, are information that can be used by others for many different purposes. For businesses and organizations, unsecured data can lead to devastating financial losses. And for private persons, it could cost them everything: their money, identity, work, and their privacy. Securing your personal data is ensuring that your rights and freedom are not violated.

With the pace of technological advancement, cybersecurity is more crucial than ever. Nowadays, we should be more aware of the security of our data. We need to educate ourselves on how we can take steps to prevent any data breach. In my company, eGlobal Solutions, we promote the following best practices that help you protect your data:

  1. Encrypt your data - the first step to making your data difficult to steal is to encrypt them. For computers or laptops, you can easily find free downloadable encryption tools for your disk drive. I used LUKS for my stolen Linux laptop to encrypt all the data in the hard drive.
  2. Create Multiple Backups - once you’ve encrypted your data, make copies and store them in other places, preferably cloud storage. This can be particularly useful later if you lose your device or hardware. There are many available cloud storage options such as GitHub, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
  3. Enable Multi-factor authentication - lastly, make sure you enable multi-factor authentication on your online accounts. These additional log-in steps can help you prevent unauthorized access as you are notified every time a login attempt happens. Multi-factor authentication is available in most platforms that require online login. This extends the login process to other devices for stricter authentication.

These are steps that you can easily do right now to prevent your data from being hacked. Even though my devices have been stolen, I’m confident that they will have a hard time accessing my data. I made sure my laptop’s hard disk is encrypted, made backups in the cloud, and enabled multi-factor authentication on all my sensitive logins.

Protecting your data is protecting your right to privacy. And these steps may seem like additional work, but they will help add security layers to your valuable online information.

About the author:

Alvin is currently the Chief Technology Officer of eGlobal Solutions, an IT-BPO company based in Pasig City, Philippines, he is also the Cybersecurity and technology consultant for the technology section of the Manila Bulletin. He has over 20 years of experience in Information Technology and Engineering, with a focus on Internet-of-things (IoT). As a kid, Alvin has keen interest in reverse engineering technology which led him to be featured in Time Magazine at age 17, for exposing the vulnerabilities of Internet infrastructure in the Philippines.

He co-founded Wright Balance, based in California, USA, a company that specializes in Biomechanics. He holds patents for several product prototypes based on Arduino, OpenCV, and other open source machine learning libraries. In 2017, he came back to the Philippines with an advocacy to use and promote technology to help improve the lives of every Filipino.

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