How to Secure Your Digital Footprint in 2024: Essential Cybersecurity Tips for Individuals and Businesses
The digital footprint is a part of everyday life in 2024, but many people do not know what it is or what it means. When we navigate the internet to make purchases or comment on our friend's Facebook post, we are creating a digital (or virtual) breadcrumb trail. This digital footprint is a running log of our online behavior and a direct reflection of our likes, dislikes, skills, and professional acumen that is visible to nearly anyone who wants to find it. To make locating and accessing key tracks along the footprint path more difficult, use a combination of two-factor authentication, regularly updated passwords, and encrypted email, and be careful about the types of information you share. Furthermore, consider using a VPN for private browsing and encrypted messaging apps.
Keep in mind that businesses also need to be concerned about the digital footprint they create. Businesses must conduct regular scans and audits of their online presence. Employees need to know and understand the need for personal privacy, updating passwords, and not sharing or duplicating passwords. Any business should also have a strong privacy policy: be respectful of the way in which you use the data collected by your company.
Data Protection Strategies for Businesses
Businesses in today's digital landscape must be prepared for a large number of potential cyber threats. Implementing firewalls and antivirus software helps to protect companies from unauthorized access and malicious software. Firewalls actively monitor incoming and outgoing traffic, while antivirus programs are designed to find and get rid of many types of harmful software. Together, these tools help make the internet a safe place for business and allow a secure environment in which individuals can be certain that their data is safe.
Businesses must also ensure they perform regular training sessions with their employees to educate them on best practices and stay ahead of the curve on the latest threats. We can, after all, build the most robust present-day cryptographic tools, but all of that means nothing if we simply give the key away. Human error is a frequent reason why unprotected data is offloaded or stolen from secure locations. This should not be the case. But by maintaining a strong sense of why data protection is important — including details about how to recognize phishing attempts, what makes a strong password, and other important cybersecurity topics — businesses can avoid many of their most common potential vulnerabilities.
Frequently updating details on how to prepare different training materials is important. When we follow training and provide details, we solidify our policy on certain issues. Know what your expected list of what you want during a data breach must be. It is always important to have coverage for the latest technologies and equip your audience with a strong list of talking points when giving your presentation. This will make you more comfortable with the material, as well as provide a layer of security for many in the future who need to prepare. Your customers want to know how their data is being handled. In addition, to comply with new regulations recently introduced through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), you must be able to tell your customers when you are doing simple tasks like email analysis. This prevents the failure to do so and the potential for your business to suffer from high continuous fees, a failing customer base, or demonstrative brand damage.
Always ensure you have an incident response plan prior to a data breach. You need to know what to do effectively in the event of a data breach or nearly any other major cybersecurity occurrence. If you know what to do, you will not need to worry or freak out when a major breakthrough in security occurs. If you are ready, tell your customers (and potentially even higher offices of law enforcement) what is happening. This will limit damage, of course, and will also give your customers greater peace of mind than they may have had if you do not provide them with a sufficient response, i.e. Equifax.
Understanding Your Digital Footprint
A "digital footprint" is the data that is left behind when you interact with the internet. This data can largely be broken down into two areas: active and passive. Active footprints are the ones that you leave behind intentionally, such as when you make social media posts, online purchase,s or comments. However, your passive footprint is left behind without you realizing it, in the form of the data that's collected from your browsing history or online cookies, as well as through other technologies such as location services. This is an important differentiation because it's a great mental model for not only individuals, but also businesses, who can use it to understand and categorize the many ways that people can personally be "exposed".
Having said everything that I’ve said up to this point, it’s almost self-explanatory why it’s important to manage your activity. However, like I said in the opening paragraph, the consequence of having a dificit in your "digital balance" can result in identity fraud, as a result of people on the internet leveraging your personal information for fraudulent activities - as might be the case for many individuals, but there are instances such as this one, where businesses have suffered often huge losses in totality, as a result of leaking their customers’ information.
Many "cyber-attacks" are actually either indirect or direct attacks against targeted information like this. As such, it’s really more about how much you share and what you’re implying information-wise, due to how it may translate in an attack profile centered around you, if that’s the case. However, ideally, you don’t have to worry about that. It would be great if you could completely isolate yourself with a strong VPN and browser, but unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
You can secure yourself to a large extent with some privacy-oriented tools, but until Javascript and similar standards are out of the picture, it’s unlikely that top cybersecurity professionals can go unsearched on the internet because, without getting too technical, that’s what the future is looking towards - not just a plot for someone with malicious intent to worm through, but the possibility for antivirus software to access your system and find problems before they become something major.
Essential Cybersecurity Practices for Individuals
Firstly, use strong, unique passwords for each of your accounts. This is because passwords are your first line of defense against hackers. A strong password is one that is difficult for a person or program to guess. Because of this, strong passwords typically include a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. You should also be sure to use different passwords for different accounts. To manage all these passwords, use a trusted password manager. These will store and fill in passwords for you, making it so you do not have to remember every password, only your master password. They can also generate random passwords for you that are more secure than anything you could come up with.
Secondly, enable two-factor authentication. In addition to supplying your password, two-factor authentication asks you to provide a second form of identification. This second form of identification is often temporary and time-sensitive, such as a single-use code given to you through a text message or an authentication app. This makes it so even if someone does know your password, they still won’t be able to access your accounts unless they also have access to this second form of ID.
Thirdly, it’s time to revise your social media settings. Though you may want to post on public settings so more people can see and interact with your posts, this visibility also extends to corporations and those who would do you wrong. Private accounts can limit the type of personal data you release to the internet. Consider whether or not the trade-off is worth it for you and look to adjust your settings accordingly, especially on a platform such as TikTok.
Lastly, update, update, update! Whether it’s a two-year-old iPhone or a 5-year-old PC, you should make it part of your routine to check for software updates for your devices. This is because as the digital world continues to update and evolve, so will its threats. And sometimes, these threats may not care at all about how old your device is. In fact, they may specifically target your device or others of its kind for its known vulnerabilities. As with the situation concerning Windows 11, updates will not last forever. After the manufacturer has ended support for the current version, you may start to consider updating to a new device before it’s too late.
Tools and Resources for Enhancing Online Safety
If I had to summarize the one thing you should take from this, it’s that eventually, your cybersecurity will fail, and you have to be prepared for it. It’s not a matter of “If I get caught.” It’s “when I will get caught.” You need to bring your own judgment to bear, and be prepared—human nature (or your boss) will sometimes not allow the obvious, secure decision to be your plan of action.
In an interconnected world, the importance of securing your digital footprint is perhaps more critical than ever before. Many of us are at risk—whether as individuals or business owners—of identity theft, a data breach, or harassment, all of which can occur online. As 2024 kicks off, I urge everyone to examine their online presence and tighten their security accordingly. This might mean checking and adjusting the privacy settings on your social media accounts or creating stronger passwords (and using a second level of two-factor authentication whenever possible).
Moreover, businesses should provide staff with the formal training needed to recognize “phishing” attempts, so that businesses can confidently conduct more operations and transactions within a digital environment. From a business standpoint, there can be secondary consequences that negatively impact finances, reputation, and the legal arenas of business. So, businesses need to maintain a focus on the cybersecurity and/or fraud elements of business—to safeguard against potential threats—as part of their ongoing business continuity plans.
Proactive measures can also signal to customers and clients that companies are moving in the right direction—at least from a credibility and trust-building standpoint. For businesses, one practical exercise is to conduct regular audits. This will help businesses figure out what type of data they have, where it is saved, and how sensitive it is, in hopes of not having to respond to a damaging data breach at some point down the road.