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We all know it: At the end of each year, many people think about things they want to change or improve in the coming year. Some people want to finally take the plunge into the gym, others are determined to learn a new language, and others are planning to eat healthier. But what about resolutions in the IT sector? You haven’t dealt with that yet? No problem! The following suggestions will help you out a little bit.
Resolution Number 1: Adjust Your Passwords
Hopefully, your passwords are not 12345 or 0000, because then they are anything but secure. Also, information that can be easily found out about you, such as birthdays, is not necessarily recommended. Why not try a combination of numbers and words that only you know? Security questions, which you have probably encountered many times, can give you a general idea. Most people don’t know which teacher taught you first or what your grandmother’s maiden name was. Combined with other numbers, letters, and special characters, your password will be harder to figure out and easier for you to remember.
Resolution Number 2: Clean Up Your E-Mail Inbox
It may seem less relevant, but cleaning up your e-mail inbox kills two birds with one stone. You’ll be doing yourself a favor by freeing up storage space. You’re also doing something positive for the environment. You’re wondering how? You’ll find the answer in our blog post about the impact of e-mails on the climate. There you’ll find out that it’s even more effective to send fewer e-mails in the first place before you have to delete them. You can also create folder structures that consist of more than just “Inbox”, “Deleted” and “Spam”. This way you can categorize received e-mails into subfolders and create rules for incoming e-mails so that they are collected in one place and don’t get lost.
Resolution Number 3: Structure Your Desktop
A desktop is like a desk: if you don’t know where to put a file, you put it on the desktop to keep track of it and deal with it soon. Huge mistake. The existence of this document will be forgotten since you won’t recognize it anyway because of all the files on your desktop. Therefore, the tip: Think about a structure and categorization in advance. Is it about documents for a specific course? Are there photos from a certain event? You can sort them by alphabet or by date, for example. Create the appropriate folders and subfolders so that you can store and later find everything that belongs to the respective category.
Resolution Number 4: Data Backup
Not only the structure of files is essential, but also that they are backed up. If your laptop suddenly breaks down while you’re still working on an important document, you’ll regret not having taken precautions. Even beautiful souvenir photos, which with increasing digitalization exist more on our computers and cell phones than anywhere else, should be retrievable if a terminal device no longer functions properly. It’s best to back up your data at least twice and on different independent storage media. Why don’t you try an external hard drive? You should assess for yourself how often your data changes and how regularly you should make your backups.
Resolution Number 5: Less Transparency, More Awareness
The 5th resolution may sound a bit philosophical, but it’s not so wrong in IT: Be careful about what data you want to disclose about yourself and where, and how transparent you want to be. This applies in particular to social networks. It is also recommended that you lock your screen as soon as you leave your workplace, whether in the office or in university buildings. The easiest way to do this on Windows is with the combination Windows key + [L] or on macOS with [ctrl] + [cmd] + [Q]. Also, be careful with your e-mails, as phishing e-mails can occur from time to time. IT security is very important nowadays and as you can see, you can do your part.
Can you think of more IT resolutions? Feel free to leave us a comment.
We wish you good luck in fulfilling your IT resolutions in the new year.
Responsible for the content of this article is Jelena Ćulum.
