We often keep all kinds of files on our computer. Many of these files surely do not have great value or contain any type of personal information that may be useful to other people. However, we surely also have other files (such as documents, photos, videos, etc.) that do contain related information about us and that, if they fall into the hands of a hacker or hacker, could jeopardize our privacy. Therefore, it is necessary to know how to protect our data correctly when saving it in Windows 10 .
What use can hackers make of our data?
Although we think that a simple piece of information, such as the day of our birth or the letter of our DNI, may not have value, hackers always manage to take advantage of all this information. The moment they find the security breach, they begin to collect as much personal data as possible. Without too much difficulty they can get all our data, track us on the network, create a fingerprint on us and start carrying out attacks on a larger scale.
Most of the time, all the information that hackers get from us is usually put up for sale on the Dark Web to the highest bidder. This data can later be used to create false online identities, and even to carry out targeted attacks by phishing or extortion.
Depending on the type of data they obtain about us, they could know where we live, or contract services (mobiles, loans, etc.) on our behalf. The consequences can be very dangerous and, unfortunately, once our privacy has been compromised, it is very difficult to achieve it again.
How to protect our data in Windows 10
Surely most of us keep all our data on the hard disk as is, in folders like My Documents. Although we have Windows 10 protected by a password, this does not prevent any user from accessing them. Without going any further, for example, you can use a Linux Live distro to access hard drives without having to log in. Or remove the hard drive and connect it to another computer.
And although the above techniques require physical access to our PC (for example, if it is stolen), we may also be compromising data over the Internet . If we have installed malicious software, for example, or someone has managed to connect to our PC through a security breach.
Store your most important data outside the PC
If we are saving personal or work data that have a certain value (personal, commercial, etc.), the best we can do is save it to other external units. For example, if we have an external hard drive , or a large capacity USB memory, we can save this data there for greater security. In this way, if someone manages to access our computer, they will not be able to access this data because they are not connected to the computer.
Even if our PC becomes infected with malware, or a ransomware encrypts our entire PC, these important data will be protected.
And if we want more protection, we can also resort to optical storage units, such as CDs and DVDs. If we hide them correctly, no one will be able to access our data.
Windows Defender helps you protect your data
At any time, malware can infect our computer. This malware can come through a malicious file that we have downloaded from websites of dubious reliability, a file that we have downloaded and opened from the mail and even through a vulnerability in our operating system.
To be protected from these threats, what we must do is have a good antivirus installed on our computer. And one of the best we can choose for Windows 10 is Windows Defender .
Of course, we also need to make sure that we keep our PC up-to-date with the latest security patches to prevent hackers from taking advantage of security flaws to put us at risk.
Use strong passwords to protect our accounts
Using weak or very old passwords is also one of the most common ways in which we compromise our security. A large number of web page password databases with millions of users have been stolen in recent years.
If we have a habit of reusing passwords, it is very likely that this password is in the hands of hackers for being part of one of these stolen databases. And therefore, they can enter any website where we use it.
The same is true, for example, if we use weak passwords . The hashes generated by weak passwords are very easy to break, as is the case with very short or common passwords, which can easily be guessed by brute force.
If we want to prevent them from accessing our email or social networks, it is necessary to have a long, secure and robust password. And, of course, using different passwords on the websites. Password managers can help us remember these passwords.
The cloud, a good place to store our data
A recommended way to save our most important data is to do it in the cloud. Whether on Google Drive , OneDrive and even Mega, we can take advantage of the cloud to safely store our data outside the computer. In this way they will be protected as well as being out of the reach of hackers.
Of course, if we are going to choose the cloud as the place to store our personal data, we must take into account a number of factors. The first of them, make sure to use a trusted cloud, such as that of Google or Microsoft. And the second, referring to the previous point, is to make sure to use a long and secure password that prevents others from accessing the cloud and our data.
What to do to protect data with confidential information
If we follow the above recommendations, we will reduce the probability that our data may fall into the hands of unauthorized users. However, these will not be armored, since there are still risks that they end up in the hands of hackers.
Therefore, if we want to protect our confidential data with very important information, we may want to go further and apply additional protection measures to prevent them from falling into the hands of other users.
We can apply an additional layer of security to our system by encrypting all hard drives. Windows 10, in its Professional edition, offers us the Bitlocker tool to do this. In addition, we can also use BitLocker to protect a USB so that nobody, without the password, can access the data.
It is also recommended to encrypt the data before uploading it to the cloud. In this way they will be kept safe on the network, we will prevent companies (such as Google) from analyzing them and even if someone manages to access our account and downloads them, since they are encrypted, we will be preventing them from accessing the information. OneDrive also have a personal store, with additional encryption and password protection, which prevents anyone from accessing the data that we have stored in the Microsoft cloud.
