Sign Form for Administrative Computer

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...does anyone really, really believe it's possible that students smart enough to get into top colleges are just now learning how to cheat effectively?Of course not. What's happening is clear: cheaters are simply more likely to get caught than before.You can input the entirety of a student's essay into an engine that will automatically divide it into numerous sections and then crawl the web for similarities. The good ones also have their own large cache of previously written essays.Everyone has quirks in their code that are unique to them and you can write code to detect aberrations from these quirks and analyze their statistical likelihood of having been copied.Electronic submission of assignments/tests has made trivial the identification of likely duplicates within classes. Previously, this was an arduous task to be done manually; in large college classes of 200+ people, the likelihood of a professor or TA remembering one submission well enough to remember it while reading its duplicate 3 hours later in the grading process was slim to none.Records of previous submissions in electronic form has put a damper on some of the legacy submissions (i.e. younger brother submitting the assignment his older sibling submitted 6 years prior).None of the above was even close to possible 10 years ago. We just didn't have the technology. What has happened is a dramatic shift in the dynamic of power between the cheater and the administrator.Previously, you could cheat from nearly any source and if you weren't completely thick about it, it was extremely unlikely that anyone would find out and take you to task. The cheater always had two huge advantages:Everyone assumed you produced/turned in honest work.It was nearly impossible to figure out what you'd cheated off of. No one is going to manually go through every book in the public library to see if you didn't just copy enormous sections of your history essay from another text.Now, however, that first advantage is quickly going by the wayside, and cheaters and administrators use the same ultimate tool: the internet.The massive amount of content on the internet and the ubiquity of Google have been game-changing equalizers. Administrators now have the same power to search as the cheater, and smart ones are quickly taking advantage of this newfound power.Not only that, but the ability to program a computer to recognize signs of cheating has greatly augmented administrator's ability; given the prohibitive cost of these programs, it's now fair to say that administrators can actually one-up the overwhelming majority of students, with the sole exception being the incredibly affluent.That is why you are seeing this so-called "rise" in cheating. It's been going on in numerous forms for an incredibly long time, but administrators are finally starting to understand just how prevalent it is thanks to their new toys.

Here is a basic run down (non-exhaustive) of some relevant rules and procedures:Admitted Freshmen get one ‘free’ major shift (no GPA requirements), but they have to wait until after the drop deadline to submit the change of major form. (Note: due to demand, there are special restrictions for transferring into Industrial Engineering or Mechanical Engineering.)Transfer students are not eligible for this ‘free’ major shift. Generally, they don’t want to encourage transfer students to apply to one department when trying to get in only to hop ship later.Different departments set their own policies, so you should consult information specific to the majors you are looking at. Some departments like Computer Science are extremely popular and thus overcrowded, so they require you to attend special change of major meetings first. Other, less popular majors may have a more relaxed process. A quick google search will tell you this.If the deadline for Phase 2 registration has passed, then he changes are not effective until the next term.Sources: GT: Registrar: Change of Major — Change of Major | admission.gatech.edu | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GAMake sure to meet with your academic adviser. You may even want to consult other resources like C2D2 or even advisers from the major you are looking at.The ‘free’ major change is just a major change freshmen are eligible for where there are little to no GPA, prerequisite courses taken, etc. requirements. After you have completed a certain number of credit hours, you will no longer be eligible for this ‘free’ major change, making it more difficult to switch.I’m not sure what kind of engineering you are looking at, so I’ll assume mechanical as that seems to be the most popular. (Even if it isn’t what you had in mind, most of the information will apply anyway.) Here is the procedure as presented on the Mechanical Engineering website:Obtain a change of major form.Have your current academic advisor and your new academic advisor sign it.To obtain the ME, NRE or UEC signature, drop the form off at the front desk in MRDC room 311, building 135 on the campus map. With the exception of first year students trying to change their major in summer or fall semester, you can pick it up the following business day from our office. Click here for our office hours. Students who are away from campus, can also email the form to Bianca Tenney, who will email the form back to you after it has been signed. Change of major forms for first year students can be picked up the form after the last day to drop an individual class for fall semester.Many departments will not sign your form during registration. ME will sign forms during registration times.Some majors (such as Computer Science, Business Administration, Chemical Engineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering and Industrial Engineering) require that you attend a change of major meeting before they will sign your change of major form.You can find advisors in all departments using Grades First.Students in the co-op program, ROTC programs and international students must have their respective advisor sign it as well.Students who are not on campus can fill out the form, scan it and send it to your ME advisor through email. We will sign it, scan it and send it back to you through email.Students who are accepted as freshmen cannot change their major until after the drop deadline of their first semester (second semester for those who start in the summer).Turn the signed form into the registrar’s office or email it to the registrar's office.If you turn your major into the registrar’s office after phase 2 registration closes for the semester, your change of major will go into effect during the following semester.Source: Change Your Major

There’s quite a bit of paperwork involved in the airline business. You ask “during the flight” but I’ll expand a bit, going through a typical flight from signing on to signing off. Come along.We show up at dispatch where a flight plan package is normally waiting for us. Sign a form that confirms you’re current and have the correct licenses (specific to our Civil Aviation Administration I think, since I don't have to sign it in other places), then after having gone through the flight plan package sign for acceptance of dispatch with that load (legal requirements but in other airlines we had to sign the flight plan itself so the method is company specific). Sign next to your name on a copy of the General Declaration, an official form that lists the crew of a flight (Company specific). For flights to China we have to also sign a form that has our passport numbers on it, to be handed over to staff on arrival there (China flights specific).The flight plan package is the reason pilots show up early for a flight as it can be a lengthy matter in itself, especially for long flights; it contains:The to be signed dispatch release form (Company requirement).The weather briefing of at the very least the departure, arrival and destination alternate airport and enroute alternates if required to support the operation. A lot more relevant enroute alternates are included but not strictly necessary. (legal requirement)The NOTAMS of all relevant airports [NOTAM - Wikipedia, NOTAMS are NOtices To AirMen that list unserviceable equipment, airport works, adjusted procedures, etc…] (legal requirement).Weather charts of enroute weather, with the position of jetstreams, the predicted areas of icing and turbulence if signNow, charts with winds enroute (legal requirements).A chart with the route plotted out for EDTO flights or long flights [EDTO or ETOPS operations need enroute airports to support flying further than an hour away from a diversion option] (legal requirement).A form that lists the MEL items if the plane has them; not strictly necessary but nice of the airline to inform us before going on board so we can plan more efficiently (company specific). [MEL or Minimum Equipment List items are items that are inoperative or considered inoperative on the airplane but don't prevent the airplane from being airworthy. Depending on the item there may be specific procedures to take into account.]The actual flight plan which has on it: the load, the fuel planning details, the filed flight plan with Air Traffic Control or ATC, the flight log details at every waypoint enroute, the winds at every waypoint at different levels, and the fuel log. It is especially the flight log and fuel log here that have to continuously be updated and followed during the flight later on. (Legal requirements). If PNRs (points of no return), fuel critical points or EDTO/ETOPS airports and equitime points are used, those are listed as well.A form that specifies that GPS signals will be available around the time of arrival at the destination, relevant for navigation based on GPS. (Legal requirement unless on board equipment can predict it).A fuel prediction form with graphs and numbers that give us a statistical idea about how much fuel the flight uses, to assist with efficient fuel planning (company specific).Any other relevant information for the flight, for example about delays in China or other flights that use the same route at busy periods… (company specific)Once that’s reviewed, done and signed we go to the airplane. Depending on where we are we may have to sign or fill out immigration forms to go airside.When we get on the plane there will be several people waiting for us: engineers/mechanics that take care of the technical stuff on the airplane, a load controller who oversees the loading and boarding of the plane, and a refueler who wants to know how much Jet A1 kerosine he can sell us today. Give that man a filled out form - not yet signed - with a standby fuel figure; we will finalize the last three to five tons of fuel at the end but he needs to start now to get it all on on time. Then have a look in the technical log or maintenance log that the engineer/mechanic gives you: is the airplane released for flight yet? If not: what are they still working on? Go through that log and note all the specifical technical issues of the airplane. If there are any MEL items then go through that book now. Everything ok? Sign the technical log which states that you accept it for flight (legal document). Then tell the load controller he can start boarding when the cabin is ready. Catering and cleaning is not our concern; the cabin crew sign for that.While we set up the cockpit and program the flight, some people will interrupt us. Betty the flight attendant brings us coffee so she’s never disliked, but load controllers can bare bad news about delays. Ground staff may bring us a NOTOC [NOtification TO Captain, a form that lists dangerous goods or special cargo, its associated procedures and where exactly it's loaded]. Sign that NOTOC and leave a copy (legal requirement). At some point load control tells us the final weight and passenger number; that’s when we calculate how much fuel more or how much less than foreseen we can take. Let the fueler know so he can go home. Before he does that though, he brings the fuel receipt which the number crunchers of the airline need to keep their computers busy. Now sign all those fuel receipts and forms (company requirements).When the loading is complete and the passengers are on board, the load controller tells us that good news and confirms with us that we have the correct loadsheet, which details all things related to weight and balance. Do I need to say it? Sign the final version of that loadsheet.Doors can be closed now that we have signed so many forms that any lawyer will have a field day with us if something goes wrong. Now we’ll put our special pen away and concentrate on flying for awhile. As a general rule there will be no paperwork until we signNow the cruise level.Once in cruise the pilot in us has to make way for the bureaucrat in us again. If you chose to be the pilot flying the sector, you’re in luck as it's normally the other pilot who will playing your secretary then. Normally we switch roles on the return sector so there’s no escape. The time to do the flight plan/fuel log has dawned upon us. Add all the times so you'll know when exactly - to the minute - we’ll be overflying all the waypoints along our route and then write every half hour (Airbus procedure) or every hour (legal procedure) how much you're up or down on fuel burn. In other airlines I worked we could just snapshot time updates overhead points along the route but here our Civil Aviation Department is stricter and requires it to be done over every single point. So go ahead and make up some that you missed already: fill out the exact time overhead every waypoint we pass. (All legal requirements.). Time updates allow us to analyse if we're making up delays or if we can have a few extra minutes in the bar on arrival. Fuel updates are a way to detect leaks and plan for arrival contingencies.If we're flying to India then somewhere along the route the purser will come in with a little book of questions for us. Time to accept that you are going to the most bureaucratic place on the third rock from the sun. Indian customs will want to know on arrival what electronic devices you have with you, phones, laptops, cameras, tablets, vibrators, what jewels, their brand and value… and the one that always gets me to count: how much money you have on you. Don't mention that you have leftover rupees from last time you were here since it's illegal to import/export the currency. Now be careful! Don't sign yet! It’s of the utmost importance to confirm whether you will have to sign beforehand and get the angry “Why haven't you signed here”-look from customs or whether you get the “How do I know you are really you unless you sign while I see you do it”-look from other customs officers. If you don't want to spend another hour in the airport after arrival because an officer has to call his manager who has to call his manager in return, who has to probably go up the chain all the way to the Prime Minister, then please make sure you’ve got this right. Obviously there have to be something like 3 or 4 signatures of yours in various places for Indian customs at some point.If nothing interesting happened during the flight, then all paperwork that remains to be completed on arrival are the technical log of the airplane and an administrative report to the airline. The administrative report determines how much we get paid at the end of the month because apart from things like who did the landing or whether an autoland was satisfactory, and apart from the reason we made up for the delay - usually if vague we blame ATC, that should be obvious by now -, it contains our duty times. Sign the administrative report of the flight (company specific).Finally write what's wrong with the airplane in the technical log. Note the arrival fuel in there as well, especially if you fly to seedy places in Africa where overnight they may defuel you, only to sell you back your own fuel the next day. Then… yeah you’ve got it by now… sign the tech log. (Legal requirement)But… if something happened during the flight we’ll be spending some more time behind the pen. ASRs or Air Safety Reports are written - and of course signed - if there was any safety related incident or if we deem that others should be alarmed about something. There are a number of other forms for various other things that could have happened, like Engine Vibration Reports, Airframe Vibration Reports, Severe Reset Reports, Commander’s Discretion Reports, ASR-Fatigue reports, yada yada yada… but I won't expand on these here anymore.Some of these reports are electronic, especially on the newer A350 airplanes, and require an electronic signature.

The “Awful Bullflap” memos were a satirical, anonymous Apple internal publication made in a “press release” or “internal memo” format similar to the official “Apple Bulletin” memos. The name even fit into the same number of letters as the Bulletin’s distinctive banner.In the imaginary world of the memos, the “Awful Bullflap” reports on the activities of “Awful Computer” on “Badly Drive” in “Cuspiduro, CA” in a way that ‘coincidentally’ corresponds to what the “Apple Bulletin” might report about “Apple Computer” on “Bandley Drive” in “Cupertino, CA.” “Awful” stands for “Apple” and “Bullflap” euphemistically stands in for “Bullshit.” The slang term “flap” also means “agitation, panic, or fluster,” adding an additional layer of meaning.The Apple archives at Stanford have three specimens of “Awful Bullflap” from April 1981. It is not clear if these were the only three memos or if more were made.The first memo is styled as a press release and describes a fictional testing facility being opened at Sing Sing prison, presumably a protest against setting up a low-cost 3rd party facility in place of Apple Employees.The second memo describes a “Proposed Sacrificial Offering” of shareholders, probably mocking stock offering memos of the era.The third memo is of the form of an internal memo (which is how companies communicated before e-mail, you younglings) from “C. A. Drakkula” (Probably a mashup of Count Dracula and Mike Markkula) making fun of an internal reorganization. As in all the Bullflap memos, the thinly veiled “changed” names are pretty indicative of the names they represent.MAKING OF THIS ANSWERI first saw this question two years ago, and I was intrigued. I followed it. When I searched for “Awful Bullflap” I found that Stanford University housed the original Apple Computer, Inc. records, 1977-1998 in the Special Collections & University Archives.When I looked further, I found that members of the public could request access to these archives and read them in the Field Reading Room. Since the special collections live in offsite storage and not in the library itself, Stanford requires at least 48 hours advance notice to transport the materials to the reading room.I posted this information in the comments of the question and said, “hey, someone local should do this!”Crickets.In September 2017, I knew I would have an afternoon appointment near Stanford, and I knew with enough advance notice to request the material. So I did! I blocked the two hours on my calendar before my meeting to park, go to the Green Library at Stanford, and see this mysterious material that is not available in digital form, and then get to my other appointment.Thankfully, Stanford is generous in allowing public access to a lot of rare archives, and they have a straightforward, well documented process that I successfully used to access this rare and unique collection.First, I requested the material through Access to Apple Collections on Tuesday, setting an appointment to view on Friday. After a painless on-line registration process. I got an email which let me track the progress of the material from an offsite location to the Field Reading Room. Before I left for Stanford, I could check that it had made it to the reading room.On Friday afternoon I departed for the labyrinthine alternate universe of Stanford. I meandered among an alphabet soup of vaguely threatening permit parking signs that festoon the campus and reflect the rigorous hierarchy of privilege there. I finally found a visitor lot and paid for parking. The clock began ticking!Using Google Maps to navigate my walk, I found my way to the Green Library where a gentleman pointed me to a computer that registered my existence by scanning my drivers license and ingesting my vital information. Once the computer acknowledged my existence, I checked in to the library and printed an adhesive name tag granting me admission to the hallowed halls.I found my way to the Field Reading Room on the second floor of the Bing Wing and identified myself there. On a separate computer system tracking users of archival material, I registered myself and signed in. They gave me a locker key in return for my ID so that I could leave everything I brought in a secure locker. I was permitted only a laptop and phone, and free Wi-Fi access. I locked up my stuff, washed my hands and headed in.Now that I had cleared all of the administrative hurdles, they gave me this:Then I sat down at their posh, academic-looking desk with a wide, comfy chairAnd found the object in question:This is what research looked like before Google, kids! (EDIT: as Sean Owczarek points out, much modern research looks this way, too, especially for history! Contrary to popular belief, not everything is on Google.)It was fun to research this answer. I hope the question followers enjoy it. There were additional questions in the comments. If they turn into actual questions, I can probably answer them.

Yes, in fact I’ve committed HIPAA violations.I had the husband of a patient call me for information about her cancer. I’d met him on the initial consult. This was a couple of years later when he called to check on her because we changed her treatment. So I explained what we were doing and about 2 months later I got a letter from her attorney complaining because the husband and wife were getting divorced.In another situation, I had a patient call to ask me the results of his scans. I relayed them to him and also answered questions on expected prognosis and treatment. It turned out to have been the patient’s brother and not the patient. The 2 brothers were suing each other regarding a joint venture gone bad. I got another attorney letter.Nothing came of the letters because during all that time, I was making every effort to treat both these patients’ cancers successfully. But their attorneys’ understandably didn’t think that my divulging information made their jobs easier.But after that, I no longer give information by phone regarding test results or treatment plans.The most egregious example of discipline related to HIPAA occurred at one of the universities to a friend of mine. My friend was suspended without pay for 6 months (I would have quit in disgust). She shared an administrative assistant with another faculty member. The secretary neglected to log out from the computer with my friend’s ID and re log in with her associates’s ID and instead entered a restricted patient’s file (a celebrity) to access test results. The electronic record sent an alarm.The university “investigation” clearly showed that the administrative assistant was at fault, but was protected by the union. So they suspended my friend without pay for 6 months. My friend is a single mother of 2. I have no idea how she supported her family for 6 months without pay.The problem with HIPAA penalties is that there is no room for intent or error. Its ridiculously draconian and HIPAA issues have gotten to the point where I can’t get test results from elsewhere without multiple forms being signed by the patient and faxed around town. It’s one more thing that employees have to be hired for in every practice or clinic that have very little to do with patient care.

(Warning: this answer is written so that non-technical readers get a good idea of the issues involved. For pedagogical purposes, there are a number of over-simplifications, and instances of terms being used loosely. For "technically accurate" terminology and details, readers are encouraged to click through to the links provided.) Most good companies will never store your password in the database  directly, and nobody in the company will know, or have access to your password directly. There are a few incompetent companies (or in-house software at your office) which do store the password directly. If a company is able to send you back your password in an email or over the  phone, that's a sure sign that the company's software is very insecure.The reason passwords are never stored directly in the database is that anybody who gets access to the database would then have access to all the  passwords of all the users. That would be disastrous, since not only would accounts of millions of people be compromised in an instant, but  also remember that many, many people use the same password across websites, so somebody who gets your Quora password might also be able to get into your Gmail and Facebook and other accounts.Instead, your password is stored using what I would call "one-way encryption."  (Technically, this is called a one-way function, or a cryptographically  secure hash function. See the Wikipedia page for details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One...) Basically, "one-way encryption" is an encryption method in which it is easy to  encode stuff, but very difficult (read: almost impossible) to decrypt it. For example, a typical one-way encryption function might have the following characteristics: it takes 1 microsecond to compute the encrypted form from a password, but is estimated to take 2000 years if you want to figure out the password from the encrypted form. Now, if you enter your username and password, the system finds the database record based on your username, and finds the encrypted version of your password there. It then takes the password that you entered, encrypts it using the one-way function (and this takes negligible time), and checks whether the encrypted form matches what is stored in the database. If yes, you're allowed into the system, otherwise you are not. If, any admin, or malicious user gets their hands on the database the encrypted passwords are of no use to them. It is still practically impossible to decrypt the stored encrypted entries and get passwords out of them. Thus, your password is safe even if the database is compromised.However, it is still possible for the hacker to try and guess what your password is. The basic idea is very simple: Guess what that user's password might be. Use the one-way function to verify whether the guess was correct or not. This takes 1 microsecond. This means that they can check a million guesses in 1 second. In other words, and they can try all the common English words, all common proper names of people and animals, with and without caplitalization, and with and without one or two digits appended to the end - all in a few minutes. Thus, if your password happens to be Jebediah23, it will get cracked in a few minutes if not less. Now realize that if I get my hands upon the database of encrypted passwords of a big site like LinkedIn - I have access to millions of encrypted passwords. In this database, I can guarantee that there will literally be hundreds of thousands of users with passwords that are English words or names, possibly with a digit or two appended at the end. In a few minutes, by simply trying all English words, names, etc., I can crack hundreds of thousands of passwords. This is called a "dictionary attack" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dic...)There is a free program called John the Ripper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joh...) which does exactly this. (And this has already happened, many, many times in the past, with major websites, including LinkedIn.)This should help you understand why your password needs digits and punctuation in the middle, and should not be a common English word, or name. Remember how some sites and system administrators are trying to enforce "strong" passwords upon you? This is what they're trying to prevent.One important concept here is that of "salting", which is useful for preventing dictionary attack. Instead of simply encrypting the password, the website appends the username or the email address or just some random string to the password and encrypts the resultant combined string. Thus if 'navin' and 'makarand' both have the password 'quorarox' the database will actually store the encrypted form of 'quorarox:navin' with navin's database record, and 'quorarox:makarand' with makarand's record. This makes it signNowly more difficult for the dictionary attack to succeed. (I have over-simplified - For more details read up on rainbow tables: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai...). The string added to the password is called a 'salt', and salting is strongly recommended, but sadly not all websites follow this practice. For example, the LinkedIn leak of June 2012 showed that LinkedIn had not salted passwords (this has since been fixed).Update: These days many websites allow users to log in using Facebook, or Google or other third parties. This works a little differently. In that case,  instead of an encrypted password, the website stores an "authorization token"  that is provided by Facebook/Google/etc to the website specifically for this user. This authorization token can be used only by this website to check whether this particular user is logged in. This is done by the website contacting Facebook/Google's servers at the time of each login. If a  hacker gets access to this authorization token, it is of no use to her,  since it cannot be used by anybody other than this website. This is because the website itself has a secret key provided to it by Facebook/Google, and this secret key is not usually stored in the database.

Disclaimer: I am not a certified cybersecurity professional like my colleague Brendon Taylor.I am however, like many who work in the IT industry, de facto help desk and tech support for family, friends and relatives when they are having problems with their PCs, laptops and devices. Think of this answer a community service announcement to lessen your home tech support pain and improve the cybersecurity and safety of your loved ones.No doubt you have fielded a call from a relative asking something like: “My computer’s acting weird” or worse: “I’m getting messages on my machine and can’t login — what’s bitcoin and why do I have to pay to unlock my computer?”That’s when you get that sinking feeling that your weekend just got busier, and wish that you had spent a little more time beforehand educating them on some cybersecurity basics. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.Outlined below are the top twelve tips you can share (or implement yourself) to better prepare before you get that call, to make everyone’s lives just a little safer online.Work out what to protect. The starting point is to work out your digital footprint — i.e. what data you have, where it is, who has access to it, and what you want to protect. Take an inventory of all of your sensitive material so you can start to consolidate your data — it’s a good time to do a virtual spring clean too. You may often be surprised what information you have sprawled on USBs, external hard drives, mobile devices, in the cloud, on camera SD cards, in printer/scanner memory, on your PC or laptop.Backup regularly. Sooner or later, something’s going to go wrong, whether malicious or user error, that will destroy data. You need to assume that this is inevitable and get a simple, effective backup solution in place that runs frequently. If you are using a physical external device, ensure that you disconnect it after backing up or it may be just as vulnerable to data loss. It doesn’t hurt to check that the backups are working periodically too  — goodness knows there have been enough professional system admins who have gone to restore from a backup only to find them corrupted or incomplete.Update regularly. Patching or updating your operating system, applications and (if you are confident) firmware is essential to reduce the number of vulnerabilities that can be used to access your device. Just like the weakest link in a chain, all it takes is a single chink in your system armour to gain a foothold. Whilst not a panacea, it certainly reduces the attack surface of vulnerabilities. Refer back to point #2 above though, sometimes your updates may not apply correctly and there are times a home techie will need to restore to a prior state if the patch you just applied didn’t work as expected.Use antivirus/anti-malware and keep signatures up to date. Whilst having an antivirus solution is not the silver bullet that some users assume them to be, they do at least provide a level of protection. Keep the signatures up to date and run scans regularly, particularly on specific files before opening them or if you notice any unusual behaviour on your system. And consider using ad blockers with your browsers too.Use strong (and unique) passwords for each key system. Better yet, use a password manager like LastPass, Dashlane or 1Password. Re-using the same password is a bad idea — if someone discovers it, they could use your password to login in to your social media, work systems or banking information so it is better to keep them separate. And please, please, don’t use the top worst passwords that are prone to reuse. Find something unique, and not too short — every extra character adds to the effort required to brute force it. And it goes without saying, don’t put passwords on a sticky note or in your wallet.Use encryption. This is a broad recommendation, but what is important here is wherever you can, secure your information so that it is harder to access or intercept. Encrypt your hard drive with something like BitLocker, your external drives and USBs so if you drop them they aren’t easily accessible, look for the lock sign (SSL) for web sites, and check the encryption settings on the apps you use. Consider using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) for more secure communication where appropriate.Always click with caution. Whether you are opening an attachment in an email or downloading and installing an app, you need to do some form of checking or verification if you think that something feels dodgy. It goes without saying, don’t run pirated software or apps from suspect web sites. With shortened web addresses it can be tricky to see what you are clicking through to. You can check these shortened URLs by using a site like CheckShortURL.com or Sucuri, or if you want to get really fancy, check out Cisco’s Talos IP and Domain Reputation Center. Calling the original sender of an email or business can be a useful alternative method of verification.Be careful what information you share and check your privacy settings. With social media privacy standards evolving regularly, it is important to check your settings to understand if you are sharing public information you didn’t mean to, such as location data, personal information like date of birth, or photos that weren’t intended for the public domain. A quick google search on your name or email address may surface information available to the public, and whether it represents you appropriately. If not, look to remove it from public view. While you are at it, be sure to check the HaveIBeenPwned website by Troy Hunt to see if your account information may have been leaked through a variety of data bsignNowes. If your account shows up, it is highly recommended that you change your passwords immediately.Watch the Wi-Fi. At home, it is important to ensure that you have taken the basic steps to secure your Wi-Fi, including: changing the default network name and password, hiding the signal from public view, updating the encryption level to the highest available and ensuring that you check periodically that there are no unknown devices attached. In public, you should approach any public Wi-Fi network with extreme caution as you don’t know who is intercepting the traffic that you are passing and where it is going. If you need any reinforcement of this, check out this article from CSO on why you should never connect to public Wi-Fi.Consider multi factor authentication. Having a second method set up to verify who you are beyond the initial system password is worth the effort for more sensitive data. There’s a useful paper from the Australian Cyber Security Centre on multi factor authentication if you want to read more.Don’t forget physical security. Devices are prone to theft or tampering, so make sure that you don’t leave them unlocked or out in the open as visible temptation for thieves. And of course, the more mobile the device, the more likely you are to lose it — looking at the 2018 Uber Lost & Found Index the number one device lost is the mobile phone. So make sure it has a passcode on it and set up the ability to find it or wipe it remotely if possible. And finally, when you are disposing of old devices, make sure you are thoroughly wiping all of the data off it.Keep informed. Technology is constantly changing, as are privacy standards and vulnerabilities that can be exploited, both through systems and more sophisticated scam techniques. Follow or subscribe to useful trusted sources of security information, such as Stay Smart Online and Scamwatch in Australia. For more advanced reading around cybersecurity or those who like listening to podcasts, check out the following: Brian Krebs, Brian Johnson — 7 Minute Security podcasts, Sans.Org Information Security Resources, Security Week or Dark Reading.I’m sure most of these cybersecurity basics apply equally well in start-ups, small business and enterprise, it is just the scale and complexity of the challenge that requires additional governance and broader controls fit for your industry. And like the old adage “charity begins at home”, so too should cybersecurity, because these habits translate into our schools, our institutions, and our businesses. These days the line between home and work are becoming more and more blurry, so being safer at home can reduce your business risk too — not to mention saving you time on the weekends not having to deal with as many unexpected tech support issues at home!Other useful resources:NSA’s Best Practices for Keeping Your Home Network SecureMicrosoft Top Tips for Internet Safety at HomeStaySmartOnline — Protect Your StuffATO Top Cybersecurity Tips for IndividualsCybersecurity While Travelling Tip CardACSC Protect: Essential Eight ExplainedReport a Cybercrime — Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network