It’s safe to say that the many personal New Year’s resolutions I’ve made and failed to sustain does not put me in a position to shame anyone that inevitably falls off the resolution wagon, but I do like to take the opportunity to encourage “self-improvement” in anyone who uses technology for any sort of productivity. Unlike dragging yourself to the gym, these resolutions take minimal effort, expense and resources to implement, and can make the difference between a very good or bad 2017.
- Resolve to back up your data. If there’s anything I can guarantee, it’s that hardware will fail, mistakes will be made, and it’s a virtual certainty that it will be at the worst possible time (as if there is ever a good time for data loss). Setting up a reliable backup system is trivial and very inexpensive and there is literally no excuse I can think of for not backing up your data. If you want to read up on some reasons why backing up is a good idea, check out these posts: Indiana County Shuttered by Ransomware, New Ransomware Encrypts Entire Disk
- Resolve to install and maintain malware protection. Though it’s becoming less prevalent than previous years, I still see people working on computers without decent malware protection, if only because of performance or cost complaints. On average, reputable antivirus software will cost between $40-80 a year, an expense that is undeniably justified when compared the amount of time and money you might lose to cleaning up a preventable infection. Not convinced? Fake Emails Hit Businesses in the Wallet
- Use unique, strong passwords for your important accounts. There have been numerous massive data breaches in 2016. If you spend any time at all online, your login and password for at least one account is in an exposed database somewhere, and it will be used to attack an account that matters to you. The only way combat this is to stop using the same password everywhere, and to change passwords more often than once a blue moon. 60M Dropbox Accounts Exposed in 2012 Breach, MySpace Breach Exposes 427M Passwords
Image courtesy of krishna arts at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
