Cybersecurity

What is Cyber Hygiene? Meeting Cybercriminals on the Front Lines

Written byKarin Kelley
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Updated onAugust 21, 2024

While the day-to-day activities present opportunities for cyberattacks, monitoring them every second is practically impossible. As a result, the systems and network need a first level of protection to defend against commonly known intrusions and attacks. This is where cyber hygiene comes into play!

Cyber hygiene has proven worthwhile for preventing malicious threats to individual systems from snowballing into larger problems. This article will discuss cyber hygiene, its importance, components, examples, and best practices.

If you’re interested in learning about cyber hygiene and other cybersecurity concepts in greater depth, we will recommend an online cybersecurity program at the end of his guide.

What is Cyber Hygiene?

Cyber hygiene refers to implementing measures to ensure the safety of networks, computers, mobile phones, and other electronic devices. These steps protect devices from data breaches, identity theft, and phishing.

Also Read: Cybersecurity Salary Guide: How Much Can You Make in 2024-25?

The Growing Importance of Cyber Hygiene

An organization can implement cybersecurity systems, create an incident response plan, and perform threat modeling. However, these form a higher level of cyber protection.

Every day, several minor and avoidable cyber threats, such as malware or phishing attacks, may penetrate the systems via files, electronic mail, data transfers, etc. Cyber hygiene is required to provide the top layer of protection to the devices when you use them for multiple operations.

Further, data transmission between the communication channels within and outside the organization may result in fragmented files, outdated programs, corrupted data, unintentional tampering, and missing files. Ignoring these may lead to a higher number of vulnerabilities. Implementing cyber hygiene methods can help detect and remove these flaws regularly.

What Does Good Cyber Hygiene Look Like?

Good cyber hygiene refers to the easy methods organizations can implement in daily operations. For example, nowadays, most organizations enforce a policy that employees have to change their passwords every six months. Financial and banking services automatically redirect users to changing their passwords every three months.

Another instance is using data encryption in messaging and data-sharing applications. WhatsApp and Microsoft SharePoint are two great examples. This ensures that only those using the applications can access the information transmitted.

Installing firewalls and scheduling system scans are practices that can be implemented in the organization’s systems. Regular scanning ensures the removal of any virus or malware introduced due to downloads, data storage devices, or phishing links.

Finally, the hallmark of good cyber hygiene is regularly backing up data on an organizational or personal level. Cloud storage and backup servers ensure quick data recovery even during data breaches.

Also Read: Decoding the Digital Shadows: Exploring Types of Hackers and Their Impact on Cybersecurity

What is Cyber Hygiene, and What are its Components?

Cyber hygiene often consists of these key elements:

Passwords: Create strong, complex passwords. Also, healthy password habits include not sharing them or using identical passwords across multiple accounts.
Firewalls: Network firewalls are necessary to block unauthorized access to company websites, email servers, and other sensitive information sources.
Multifactor Authentication: Critical accounts should be secured with multifactor authentication to limit access and protect organizational data.
Data Backups: It’s crucial to back up essential files to a separate location, such as an external hard drive. Cloud storage can also be used with proper security measures.
Security Software: Installing a good antivirus product can automatically scan devices for malicious software, remove threats, and offer protection against various online dangers and security breaches.
Employee Awareness: Regular cybersecurity training and awareness sessions can help employees recognize and abstain from risky behavior and keep them updated about emerging threats and possible actions to take.
Third-party assistance: Cyber hygiene works best when deployed throughout the organization. Hence, close collaboration between IT teams, end users, and specialized services from third-party experts ensure a holistic approach to cyber hygiene.

Why Organizations Must Take Cyber Hygiene Seriously

Cyber hygiene can benefit an organization’s growth and credibility in several ways. Here are its main advantages:

Cyber hygiene improves the security health of the organization and reduces the risk.
It helps in better risk management by taking care of smaller risks immediately.
Cyber hygiene enhances the productivity of the organization by reducing the number of operational disruptions.
Organizations gain a good reputation because of data safety measures.
Cyber hygiene ensures compliance with the requirements of standards and governmental regulations.
Employees are more aware of cyber hygiene best practices and can avert security incidents by alerting the IT time on time.
Organizations can avoid fines and penalties levied in the events of non-compliance or data breaches, thus reducing costs.

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Problems With Cyber Hygiene

Insufficient and ineffective cyber hygiene may result in multiple problems that leave an organization reeling. Hence, understanding such problems is critical. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Outdated software presents vulnerabilities and chances for attacks.
Data may get lost due to insufficient or irregular backing up of data in hard drives or cloud storage.
Every system has several storage places, and files may be saved in any of them. Hence, there is a chance of misplaced and duplicate files.
Security software that has not been updated does not have capabilities for the current version of malware, making it ineffective.
Excessive access permissions may cause users not to read what they agree to, leading to malicious applications worming their way into the systems.
Weak passwords with easily identifiable phrases such as birth date, names, places, etc., are simple for advanced software to crack and can provide easy access to nefarious elements.
Using unverified storage devices such as thumb drives for transferring data from third-party computers has been a major source of malware for the last couple of decades.

What is Cyber Hygiene? Best Practices

Here are certain best practices you can follow to ensure robust cyber hygiene.

Enlist all the systems in your organization and ensure they are suitably protected.
The passwords must be alpha-numeric with special characters and preferably not your name, birth date, or any other easily identifiable information.
Multi-factor authentication must be implemented to ensure nobody can access the account, and the account holder will be alerted if anyone else tries to log in.
Schedule regular data backups and automate them if the storage system allows it.
Ensure all software is in an updated condition.
Install anti-virus software and schedule regular scans to track and flag issues.
Avoid opening email addresses from unknown sources, and do not click on unfamiliar links.
Verify the messages or emails are from the official source.
Set complex passwords for wifi networks.

Also Read: Cybersecurity vs. Software Engineering

Cyber Hygiene: Checklist to Ensure Efficacy

So, what should you do to ensure robust cyber hygiene? Here’s a checklist.

List all the software and hardware used in your organization and users. Check the security measures for each and create a schedule for updating timelines. Explore endpoint security solutions to automate the deployment of software patches.
Enforce multi-factor authentication in every system. Organize regular reviews to check its efficacy and problems. Explore and implement multiple ways to log in or block in case of unauthorized access.
Organize training for IT teams with the help of experts to understand the best ways to communicate the need for and implement cyber hygiene.
Design awareness programs for employees that are comprehensible and have clear action plans. Employees should not be confused by too many technical terms and know exactly what to do when faced with a potential risk.
Provide clear instructions with emails flagging unidentified links as possible phishing attempts. Regularly review the phishing instances to observe the sources, communicate new information, and flag email addresses with the employees.
Categorize data based on criticality. Provide multiple places to store data. Arrange for automated updations, say every night at 2 am, when the number of employees working or changing data may be the lowest.
Plan and implement network segmentation. Assess the systems that need to be on the main network and those that can be on a partially connected network. End users need separate features on external networks to access the software from the organization’s website. For example, Python has an online interface where you can write and compile code. Use a separate network for such compilers to keep the organizational data inaccessible to the end users.
Budget for security audits. Over time, auditing may be overlooked for more than the stipulated time. Hence, plan and schedule audits several months in advance so that the organization and the auditing team are ready and can carry out the audit quickly and efficiently. Document the report and the learnings, and plan to implement the learnings in the systems.

Gain In-demand Cybersecurity Skills

Good cyber hygiene is a mode to reduce stress on the organization, and it checks and tracks every small interaction and data exchange for the possibility of a cyber threat. However, to understand where and how to apply the best practices and concepts, you must know the ins and outs of cybersecurity.

Our future-ready online cybersecurity bootcamp is specially curated to introduce and elaborate fundamentals such as Data Privacy, encryption techniques, security issues, and virtual private networks (VPNs). The program also provides hands-on training with popular tools such as BURP, Wireshark, and Metasploit. Learn from cybersecurity veterans and industry leaders and take your knowledge to the next level!