Top 10 Tricks and Tips for securing and protecting data.

Many of us wonder to protect our data in safe and wants to increase its secure it's up to many folds. Many of us think that it's enough that we keep our system i.e. windows and antivirus up to date. But this is not up to the mark. As windows update and antivirus software alone cannot protect data and its security.

Here are Top 10 Tricks and Tips to protect data and security :

1) Disable remote registry editing.

Only we should be able to edit our windows registry, so make sure this service is disabled by clicking start  >>  run  >>  services.msc  >>  remote registry and make sure that this service is stopped or if not then do it and then set it to either manual or disable.

2) Lock the Computer.

It's always a good idea to lock the computer if strangers are nearby and we are going to step away for a sometime. This can be done by just pressing windows key + l. Alternatively we can set the screensaver and set it to require a password if it is deactivated by checking the box in settings that says on resume, password protect.

3) Prevent phishing attacks.

Protect yourself from identity theft and phishing attacks by using the latest versions of Firefox, internet explorer, opera etc. These browsers include protection that double checks URLs against a blacklist and will notify when we are about to visit a known phishing site.

4) Be wary of p2p files.

Virus makers love peer to peer file sharing services. They name their virus on the name of famous people and upload it. Then millions of people download it, launch it and wonder why their computers are infected with viruses. Download these with caution and always use a good antivirus software.

5) Wipe the drive before donating old computer. 

If someone is getting rid of a hard drive and wants to change it then he /she should wipe out all the data to an unrecoverable state.

6) Encrypt sensitive files.

We should always encrypt the sensitive data of our computer and save it to a safe place.

7) Must backup the data and verify it.

We must back up our data under a specific period of time. Many people set and forget about the data backup. But we should keep it in our mind to back up regularly. After back up we should check the target folders periodically to ensure the proper files are being backed up or not. If not then reconfigure the backup routine to make sure it's working properly.

8) Turn off computer during lightning storms.

Even surge protectors can be overwhelmed during electrical storms and we already know the results that could take place so during heavy duty electrical storm we should unplug computer from the wall socket.

9) Enable smart technique for hard drives.

Smart is abbreviation of self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology which allows our drive to report when it is about to fail which can give us a heads up to replace it.

10) Enable extension viewing.

By default windows hides file extensions and virus makers exploit this feature by giving their executable program names ending with .exe extension which appears to be an application. To Enable extension viewing open folder options and uncheck hide extensions for known file types.

So these are Top 10 Tricks and Tips to protect data and security.