The five pillars of digital preparedness

Your cellar may be stocked with canned goods and your roof covered in solar panels, but are you digitally prepped?

This is part two of a series of guest posts by The Digital Prepper. Read part one here:

Our critical infrastructure is a ticking time bomb

With so much of our lives lived online, digital preparedness is as important as storing food and drinking water.

I am currently a high level engineer at one of the most popular companies in the world and keep myself constantly updated on the latest news and updates in technology.

I have been working in the IT industry for about 15 years and have been prepping for just as long. Over the years, I’ve learned and shared a lot about various aspects of digital preparedness, such as explaining major global cyber security risks, understanding how to manage personal passwords, learning the difference between archiving and backing up data, and why drones are a great preparedness item. 

Still, I’m not sure if most people really understand what digital prepping is and why it needs to be part of your preparedness mindset. Let’s change that now.

I generally describe digital preparedness through the lens of five major pillars:

• 1) Security

• 2) Cyber Hygiene

• 3) Digital Literacy

• 4) Backups

• 5) Resilience 

Yes, there are other things to look at, including firewalls, handheld radios, solar batteries, and more. (Editor’s note: Throw all your ideas in the comments — they are super useful!)

But let’s start with the fundamentals:

Security

Generally, this can be defined as protecting your personal information — things like internet passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, or any personally identifiable information. This also includes securing your personal devices, like phones and personal computers.

First off, when it comes to passwords avoid using easily guessed words or phrases like your birthday or your pet's name. Instead, use a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Next, be sure to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on as many of your accounts as you can. I know it seems like an added burden, but it creates an important additional layer of security that makes it harder for bad actors to get access to your accounts. Finally, be very careful about what you share online. Avoid overtly sharing personal information like your address, phone number, or date of birth on social media or other public websites. Only share this information with trusted sources, or better yet, don’t share it at all. Be mindful of those little quizzes and games that ask things like your favorite color or the movies that were popular when you were in high school… they may just be sneaky ways to figure out your personal data.

Cyber Hygiene

Imagine that your computer, or whatever internet-connected device you’re using, is your body. Cyber hygiene is akin to taking care of yourself by eating healthy, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep. Just as good physical hygiene can help you stay healthy and avoid disease, good cyber hygiene can do the same. This involves practices like keeping your devices’ software up to date and using a firewall or antivirus software to protect against malware and other cyber threats. It is also important to remember that cyber hygiene is not ‘one and done.’ Just like brushing your teeth, it needs to happen on a regular basis to maintain your online health.

Digital Literacy

This is possibly one of the most complex pillars to fully understand. Perhaps the best way to explain it is this: digital literacy is having the ability to find, understand, evaluate, create, and communicate information using digital technology.

This means not only finding information online, but evaluating its credibility. We are bombarded with information from Facebook, Twitter (“X”) and YouTube, and it’s hard to know where that information is coming from or whether it should be trusted. It is equally important to verify the information you get from so-called mainstream news sources like Fox, CNN, NPR, or the BBC, especially if you intend to share that information with others. 

It’s very easy to pass along misinformation, making you part of the problem instead of the solution. It’s up to each one of us to verify that the information we collect is correct before sharing it. If you’re not sure, don’t share.

Verifying is, in itself, a tricky business. Propaganda is a real concern and sites that purport to be sources of ‘truth’ are riddled with bias and bad information. Nefarious actors have also been able to worm their way into a lot of our critical central infrastructure, as we discussed in our previous post. Just take a look at what happened the past few years with attacks on fuel pipelines, water treatment facilities, and US government systems.

Digital literacy is important for everyone, regardless of age or occupation. If you don’t know how to start, that’s ok. Reach out to someone who may be more tech literate — or you can even reach out to me if you have any questions. You can find me on Twitter or YouTube.

Backups

Honestly, having backups is not just the simplest thing you can do right now, it is possibly the most important. Backup your data right now — as soon as you finish reading this article. Make sure you have backups of all your important files in case your computer or other device is lost or damaged.

This is pretty easy to accomplish. You can use a hard drive or Network Attached Storage (or NAS) device if you want to keep your files local, or use one of the myriad of cloud-based storage options. There are pros and cons to both. I recommend thinking about both options, just so you don’t have all your “eggs” in one basket.

With local storage options, you have to worry about keeping your device maintained. If something happens to your drive, your backup could be gone forever. You can help protect against this by buying more robust storage options, like the ones from iOSafe for example, that have waterproofing and even fireproofing options (for an additional cost). 

Cloud-based storage options are more user-friendly in that regard, and can also be configured to automatically send your important files to a secure server. Most of the time, the companies that own these servers have redundant options so if something happens on their end — like their servers crashing or a possible cyber attack — your data doesn’t get lost. Still, one of the major issues is that you have to trust that company to keep your data safe and secure. One data breach and your files, along with whatever other information you’ve given the company (like billing information), can fall into the wrong hands.

Resilience

Ironically, resilience is the last thing we’re covering here but it’s one of the first things you should think about in terms of digital preparedness. 

We’ve all been there. We see an email that looks like it was sent from our bank or a shopping site we’re familiar with. Unknowingly, we click on a malicious link that installs malicious software on your computer.

What if you could avoid this scenario entirely with just a little perception and five minutes of work?

Those are the kinds of questions to ask when we think about resilience. It’s simply the ability to protect yourself from cyber threats, recover from cyber attacks, and most importantly: learn from your mistakes. Because cyber threats are becoming more common and sophisticated, it’s important to be able to take a proactive approach to digital preparedness. Honestly, it’s also important to be mentally prepared for cyber attacks. They may happen — and probably will — but if you’ve prepared ahead of time, you can mitigate or even deflect the attack entirely.

Online, companies have data breaches all the time. However, if you have already have a strong password, and enabled 2FA on your account, even if a bad actor gets your username, they’d likely be unable to get into your account in the majority of instances.

You might never be completely immune to cyber attacks, but by following the above steps, you can make it a lot more difficult for attackers to succeed. It is important to have a strong understanding of these five pillars of digital preparedness, and remember it’s never too late to start preparing.

Take the first steps to protect yourself and improve your digital preparedness today. And always remember to stay safe and stay prepared.

---

The Digital Prepper is an IT industry insider who aims to inform people about how to be prepared on a digital and technical level. Follow them on X @TheDigitalPrep or YouTube @TheDigitalPrepper.

---