Cybersecurity for your personal computer: Difference between revisions

Strong passwords are essential to keep your computer and your accounts secure.  Refer to [[Cybersecurity for your personal computer#Password_hygiene_habits|Password hygiene habits]] for more tips.

We rely on a variety of online resources and accounts to help us in our work and to tackle tasks effectively. How we access these tools and how we behave online can have a significant impact on our personal security and the security of the resources we share.

Taking control of the information we provide to online service providers, limiting the extent to which commercial entities can track our activity, and thinking about how we authenticate to online accounts can all have a security benefit.

We can start where we are and start today. We can choose to share less personal information voluntarily when responding to requests, signing up for services, posting on social media. The less personal information you share about yourself, the harder it is for an attacker to connect those pieces of information and use them to target you.

We can choose to use privacy-enhancing search tools like DuckDuckGo ([https://duckduckgo.com/ duckduckgo.com]), install browser extensions like Privacy Badger ([https://privacybadger.org/ privacybadger.org]), HTTPS Everywhere ([https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere eff.org/https-everywhere]), uBlock Origin ([https://ublockorigin.com/ ublockorigin.com]). We can limit the use of cookies via browser settings and turn on features that limit the links and tracking tools of social media companies ([https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/facebookcontainer/ mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/facebookcontainer]).

Make sure you understand [[Sharing data#Filesystem_permissions|how Linux permissions work]] and restrict access to your files in our supercomputers to only those who need access to them.

'''''Mistake 2''''': Not using the ''sticky bit'', leading to the deletion of your files by someone else.

When dealing with a shared directory where multiple users have read, write and execute permission, the issue of ensuring that an individual cannot delete the files or directories of another can arise. Make sure you are familiar with [[Sharing data#The_Sticky_Bit|the notion of sticky bit]] and use it when appropriate.  

[[Sharing data#Access_control_lists_.28ACLs.29|Managing ACLs (Access Control Lists)]] can quickly become complex. It is best practice to use groups rather than multiple individual accounts to grant permissions when possible.