From the course: Security Tips: Protecting Sensitive Information

Employing secure practices

From the course: Security Tips: Protecting Sensitive Information

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Employing secure practices

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- [Instructor] While encryption provides us a powerful way of securing data at rest, whether it's by encrypting a full disk or working inside of encrypted disk images, encryption isn't the only thing we need to do to ensure the safety of data. We also need to follow secure practices when working with sensitive information. One common way of helping to secure sensitive information is to use a password manager to keep credentials and passwords safe. Sensitive information isn't always contained in files. Sometimes, sensitive information can be simply a username and password. Password managers are a good choice for keeping this information protected. Programs which are designed to store passwords often lock them away behind a password or other credential controlling access to them to keep them out of unauthorized hands. Password managers also often offer a feature that can create strong passwords for you saving you the effort of inventing one yourself. Many password managers can also store small files securely making them a great place to store backup copies of key pairs or certificates. Another benefit of many password managers is that they can synchronize information securely across devices, making more protected information available on computers and mobile devices. If you have notes that you need to keep secure, you could use an encrypted file or a file on an encrypted disk. Or you can use a password manager or note application that supports protected notes. This is a common feature of password managers like one password and of note taking apps like Apple notes. Such tools can protect notes with a password. Like password managers, note applications can often sync to your supported devices in a secure way as well. When it comes to communicating online, many of us use chat applications like messages, we chat, discord and any number of others. Chat applications vary and how they protect information. Some provide end to end encryption and others provide encryption between the client and the server, but store the contents of the chats on their servers. Depending on your threat model and how you want your information secured, you should research how apps you use tree data protection. I won't go through a rundown of all the messaging apps here because features change all the time. But if you're looking for secure communication, take a look at apps like signal and be sure to research other apps too. Throughout the rest of the chapter we'll take a look at a few other important secure practices that relate to communication and sharing of files online.

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