Blog / Do You Have Any Resolutions For The New Year?
Christmas is a time to sit down with family and friends, and give thanks for the good things that you have. It’s certainly not for pondering work or something heavy like cyber security. Yet here I am with a short newsletter and a reminder that your cyber security should never be forgotten.
Now don’t worry, I’m not going to go into anything too deep. I just wanted to propose some simple New Years resolutions to consider. They’re straightforward and easy enough to implement with a little curiousity and some savvy internet searching.
#1: Learn more about our firewall features and what they can do.
As one of TRINUS’s longtime partners, WatchGuard offers a NextGen firewall with a wealth of advanced features we generally recommend to our customers. If you’ve got one of these advanced firewalls protecting your network, we highly recommend learning as much about it as you can. There are plenty of YouTube videos about different features, and of course, the WatchGuard website. There are other providers but they will all have different features and interfaces, so just make sure you find information for the make and model you have.
#2: Learn more about internet protocols.
You might be surprised that there are a fair number of people out there who don’t know the difference between HTTP and HTTPS, but it’s true. And if you’re one of them, you might want to consider learning them. Remember, we’re keeping this light so don’t worry about learning them in-depth, but you should understand the purpose behind each and how they compare with one another. While you’re learning about the various features of your firewall keep an eye out for abbreviations you don’t understand and investigate them. For example, WatchGuard firewalls support VPNs. Do you know what a VPN is? If not, that’s something to investigate. They also have a feature called DNSWatch. What does DNS stand for and what does it do? Get curious and dig around!
#3: Read and follow all of Karl’s advice.
Okay, shameless plugs aside, here’s the thing; these days you need qualified sources of trustworthy computer security advice. There’s plenty of reputable blogs written by qualified individuals and security newsletters. Some are text and some are videos and some are podcasts. Find some in your preferred format aimed at your skill level and make an effort to actively practice their advice. That’s the important part, after all.
The key to useful resolutions is making them both specific enough to give you direction, and accomplishable. You still need to put in some effort to better yourself and learn something (that’s the point of a resolution after all), but the goal should still actually be possible. A lot of the things that people talk about are a lot easier to understand if you know something about what’s going on under the hood.
Shakespeare doesn’t have much to say about Christmas (his works only mention it a mere three times), but there’s a bit from Love’s Labors Lost that seems appropriate: “At Christmas I no more desire a rose than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth”
Have a Happy New Year, everyone.
By Kind, Courtesy of Your Friendly Neighbourhood Cyber-Man.
