Five Ways to Prepare Defensible Space in Cyberspace

I live in a small town just north of the #WaldoCanyonFire. Luckily, my home is far enough away from the fire that we weren’t forced to evacuate. However, the fire was still a big wake-up call for our neighborhood. We live in a beautiful, heavily forested area and one of the constant tasks that are required when you live amongst the pines is maintaining “defensible space.” � Defensible space is a buffer between a home and the fuels that feed wildfires. So besides making sure we had our keepsakes and valuables close at hand, I and a number of my neighbors were out trimming dead branches and cleaning out gutters this past week.

In addition to clearing some defensible space around my home and monitoring the Twitter feeds for the latest on the fire, I also spent the week attending a seminar on cybersecurity. About half-way though the week it struck me how similar cybersecurity and protecting my home are. I love the forest and if it wasn’t for the fire risk I wouldn’t even consider cutting a tree down. Last year I had to remove seven, mostly because they were sick or damaged. Now it looks like I’ll have to cut down another six. But these trees are healthy; they’re just growing in the wrong spots.

We all love the Internet. In fact we can’t get enough of it. Bandwidth demand just keeps growing and it seems that there’s a new killer app released almost every day. But we also have to keep a defensible space between the Internet and our homes, businesses or organizations. Seriously, who really wants to install and configure a bunch of extra electronic equipment just to keep people out? I’m not a proponent of living without locks on our doors, but in the world of cybersecurity it seems like you need a door lock, six deadbolts, security cameras, a twelve foot high electric fence (with barbed wire), laser sensors and a guard dog. And even that is probably not enough.

But in a world in which wildfires happen and hackers exist, we have to create defensible space to protect our valuables.

Here’s the five ways you can create some defensible space in your little corner of cyberspace.

Maintain your software. Update your anti-virus, system software and your applications. Keep up with your patches. I for one hate all those constant software update messages but cyberspace attacks and wildfires can happen in minutes, if not seconds. Auto updates mean that you’ll have at least some chance of preparing for new attacks before they occur.
If you use a firewall, keep it configured properly. A firewall is only as effective as the rules it uses to protect you. If you have to temporarily poke a hole in the firewall for an application, don’t forget to go back and close it when it’s no longer needed. Buying the best deadbolt in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t turn the bolt into the latch.
Change your password. Just go ahead and do it right now. I bet you that, unless your IT department has forced you to do it, you’re still using the same password you created back when G.W. Bush was in office. And yes, it needs to be at least 8 characters long, include special characters (if they are allowed), mixed cases, letters AND numbers. And don’t just use one password for everything. The Internet is littered with organizations that have bad security habits. All it takes is for a hacker to break into one of the systems that you have stored your password on and suddenly they’ll have access to all your accounts. If a hacker wants access to your bank account, they’ll break into your “gottabuyitnow.com” account to get your password first. Yes, hackers are that smart.
Keep your doors locked. (Keep you data center locked, too.) Physical security is one of the biggest things overlooked when people think about cybersecurity. Why would a thief go through the hassle of hacking into your system when they can just walk in and take your hard disk? Sure theft is risky, but a lot of times it’s a lot easier to steal your computer and your data. Know where your laptops are and keep your secure token, secure.
Buy a new computer. All right, so that six-year-old laptop is quite the conversation starter and you get a lot of exercise lugging it around, but it can’t run all the latest software, which makes it a huge malware magnet.

Anyway, if we all maintain some defensible cyberspace we’ll help reduce the risk from threats that we all face. And if you have any extra rain around your area please send it our way.

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