Information security

Here are some tips on how to secure the information you store on your computer, phone, and various cloud services.

Passphrases

You must always use different passwords on all services. This is because if someone finds out your password, they will only be able to access only one of your accounts. To make your password difficult to crack, they must always consist of at least 12 characters.

Making your password a phrase makes it easier to remember. You can base your passphrase on a sentence or phrase, such as a line from song that you will remember. To make the password even stronger, you can use spaces, numbers, and replace some letters with symbols. For example, you can replace the letter “o” with 0 (zero) or with @.

Read more about using passphrases here: sans.org — Passphrases

Password manager

When you use different passwords on all services, it can be very difficult to keep track of them all. That’s why we recommend using a password manager, which is a program that remembers your username and password for all the different services that you need to log in to.

There are a number of password manager providers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The Service Centre can provide basic support for the following solutions:

Read more about using password managers here: sans.org — Password managers

Two-factor verification

The combination of username and password is not considered sufficient to secure information that may be misused by others. We are constantly seeing media reports about sensitive images that have gone astray when they have only been secured with a username and password. We therefore recommend that you use two-factor verification (also called two-step verification) wherever you store information that you want to keep private. This includes e-mail accounts, social media, services where you store data (including photos) and, of course, your password manager. All Norwegian banks already have two-factor verification requirements for logging in.

Read more about two-step verification here: sans.org — Lock down your login

You can find descriptions of how to turn on two-factor verification for different services here: turnon2fa.com

Keep your computer and phone software up to date.

Your computer and phone operating systems, as well as various apps and programs, are continuously being updated. These updates are often security related and help secure your information. Although it may be annoying to have to install these updates regularly, it must be done as soon as possible after they are released.

Backup information

If things go terribly wrong, it can be very convenient to have a backup of the information you have stored on your computer or phone. Keep in mind that if you use a cloud-based solution to back up your information, it must be secured with two-factor authentication in addition to a username and password.