Data Hygiene

While I was making hand sanitizer last month, I started thinking about the hygiene of data and what we should be doing as individuals and organizations to become more vigilant about the management of data.

Now is a great time to ensure that the data we create, manage, and disseminate is handled appropriately and update our data management practices where we are falling short.

Remote working and online education, video conferencing, and even placing take-out orders may be new activities where we are not practicing the best data hygiene that we could.

Here are some simple data hygiene steps you can do today:

• Reset your passwords more frequently.
• Speaking of passwords, now might be a good time to start using a password manager.
• Leverage a VPN (Virtual Private Network).
• Review security and access controls to online accounts.

Data Management at home and at the workplace consists of proactive and reactive efforts that we all should become more invested in. So, stay healthy and practice vigilant personal hygiene, but also invest some time to make sure you practice some vigilant data hygiene.

Be safe out there.