
Dealing with IT is part of daily business. It is therefore not surprising that in the course of time certain IT habits creep in with every user. But most people forget that these behaviour patterns can have many bad consequences in the long run. This may be because of the convenience, but also because of ignorance, which makes users careless with IT until something bad happens.
The following is a list of most IT habits, their consequences and what solutions are available to solve the problem. Everyone benefits from a quick acclimatization of the behaviour patterns.
A password rarely comes alone
Who is not proud of the fact that their own password meets all guidelines to be more secure from attackers and hackers? Finally, creativity is needed to create a password that is sufficiently long and contains upper and lower-case letters, but also special characters and numbers. Anyone who has achieved this is usually proud of himself and at the same time thinks that this would be enough to protect all e-mail accounts, bank accounts, online office tools and online shopping sites. But every user who only uses one password is wrong and puts his devices and himself in danger. Because with only one password, identity thieves have it very easy to break through the firewall and have access to all data. Variation of passwords is the key to more security.
Eating and drinking on your laptop
It may be tempting to take food to your laptop. Whether it’s at work or at home. The laptop comes into contact with food more often than it should. Even if many thinks that nothing will happen, unfortunately it happened faster than most people can see. In just a few milliseconds, crumbs, sauce stains, ingredients or even whole drinks get onto the keyboard. Everyone knows that electronics and liquid are not compatible, but nevertheless less attention is paid when using the computer. Liquid can do great damage and spoil the entire hard disk in a very short time. From non-functioning keyboards to faulty mainboards to short circuits. To prevent this, food of any kind should be kept away from electronic hardware.
Non-existent backups
If it is not you, then an acquaintance or someone from the company does not make backups. Everyone knows at least one person who does not back up the data regularly and thus runs the risk of data loss. After all, a hard disk is not immortal, so sooner or later the good part and all the data will go with it. Of course, regular backups are not one of your employment preferences, but it is unavoidable to back up the data regularly or, in the best case, to store it additionally on an external hard disk before a total loss occurs.
Switch off the computer at the push of a button
Who recognizes the statement that many users switch off the computer as soon as they no longer need it by pressing the switch-off button? But what many do not know is that by pressing a button, the computer is simply put into sleep mode and thus continues to consume energy. Furthermore, this sleep mode means that the computer does not reboot regularly. However, if the switch-off button cannot be omitted in the future either, the function of switching off the device at the push of a button should be adapted. This is done under Control Panel – Energy Options. Consequently, the action “Selection of what should happen when power switches are pressed” is located on the left. Under this point you can select “Go down” directly for switching off by pressing the button.
Protect passwords correctly
For more security, there are several sophisticated passwords that comply with the guidelines. Everyone who heeds and implements this advice supports their own safety. But fiddling out numerous different passwords usually means that not all passwords can be remembered, especially when using numerous websites. There is only one thing to do: Save all passwords in your own software in an unsecured document, as an Outlook note or on your mobile phone. Of course not! Many may implement it this way, but at the same time they are in danger because the passwords are not protected in this way. To protect passwords securely, programs such as “KeePass” should be used for password management, which encrypt the entire database.
Not enough IT habits? Read more about this topic.