 Welcome to the Data Management video series from the University of Wisconsin Data Services. I'm Kristen Briney of the Data Services Librarian here at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In this video, we're going to cover some basic tips for computer security. And this is because data security and computer security are actually related. If you have your data on your computer, you need to take care of your computer in order to take care of your data. So I'm going to go through just some top five tips for keeping your computer secure and thus keep your data secure. So tip number one is to make sure all of your software is up to date and patched. And the reason you do this is to make sure that you don't have any holes that viruses or attackers can get through. And this is common that people find holes in operating systems and browsers and things like Java and Acrobat Reader and things like that. So you want to make sure that your software is consistently up to date so those holes are covered. And so you have the best functionality possible to protect your device. The second recommendation for basic computer security is to run antivirus or anti-malware software. And this is actually going to go out onto your computer and look for viruses and make sure if it finds them that they're contained and they won't affect your computer. So this is really an important step to make sure your computer is well protected so it won't be buggy, so you won't get locked out of your important content and whatever the viruses on your computer are likely to do. The third recommendation for basic computer security is to practice safe internet usage. And this means using a firewall and to only really visit sites that you know and you trust. So don't download that suspicious attachment to your email. Don't click on that weird link. Don't respond to the email and say, oh, here's my login and my password information. Just use your common sense. If it looks a little weird, don't visit it. Don't click on it. Don't download it. To take that a step further, recommendation number four is actually just to have a dedicated workstation for your research. So if you're going to browse the internet, use a different computer than where you actually do your research. And you can even go ahead and unplug your research computer from the internet if you're worried about that. And this is going to protect you from those outside threats to your computer. And it's going to allow you to focus only on research on this computer, keep your computer safe, keep your data safe. And then anytime you'll be out on the web and you might be susceptible, you are doing that on a different device. The final of the five recommendations for basic computer security is really important if you have sensitive information like personally identifiable information. And that is to encrypt your device. So encrypt your laptop, encrypt your desktop, encrypt your external device. If you have sensitive information on there, really do be sure that it gets encrypted so no one else can access it without the proper password. And don't share the password. So this you can get help with with your local IT support. They shouldn't be able to refer you to software that's supported locally and be able to get to help in this area. So those are the top five recommendations for basic computer security. Hopefully if you follow them, the first one is keep your software patched not to date. The second one is use antivirus software. The third one is practice safe internet usage. The fourth one is use a dedicated workstation. And the fifth one encrypt your device. If you follow all those five, if you think more about your computer security, hopefully you'll see that you'll have better, safer data in the long run.