What is cyber hygiene?

It is making sure we are protecting and maintaining systems and devices appropriately and using cyber security best practices for anything and everything that connects to the web. It includes organizing security in hardware, software and IT infrastructure, continuous network monitoring, and employee awareness and training.

If you ask me, I'd say that in today's world cyber hygiene is as important as personal hygiene. I wouldn't want to go into the technicalities of the term, will simply say that it refers to what one does to improve cybersecurity while being online. There are lots of things that we need to do, on our part, as users, to ensure cybersecurity. These practices together constitute cyber hygiene. Cyber hygiene includes things like network segmentation, enforcement of compartmentalized user permissions, enforcement of strong password rules, enforcement of firewall installations, updating blacklists/whitelists, ensuring proper installation of antivirus, ensuring that all firmware/software patches are properly installed etc. I wouldn't want to make it sound too complicated, hope this is enough to give a rough idea as to what cyber hygiene is all about.

The term cyber hygiene itself tells us what it's all about. It refers to what all we need to do to ensure/maintain system health and improve online security. In fact, cyber hygiene practices are often part of a routine and hence regularly conducted, just like personal hygiene practices. Cyber hygiene helps prevent cyberattacks, secure data, avoid vulnerabilities, detect issues, ensure proper functionality of all systems and devices, prevent theft etc. Remember, cyber hygiene covers the hardware, the software and all the applications involved, and includes password management, software updations, installation of security software, managing and limiting users, having a regular back up etc. There should always be a proper and comprehensive cyber hygiene plan for organizations and businesses.