There was a time when personal and private things can be stored offline behind doors, locked inside closets or inside a safe box. But data, that seems to be impossible, especially with the increasing amount of them generated, and with the availability of the internet.
We're creating a massive amount of data, whether we want it or not.
From our smartphones, PCs, laptops, thumb drives to practically dozens of online services we've registered ourselves. They all contribute to how and where our data and information are stored.
With that many data generated and put scattered in many places, how can we guarantee their security from unwanted access?
The answer is: we can't.
Virtually any devices we own or services that we've registered to, can be compromised. Our smartphones can get lost, our laptops broken, thumb drives misplaced, our internet connection tapped, online storage hacked and hackers in getting more sophisticated, can get to us when we're unaware.
So how can we secure our data when the potentials of breach is inevitable? The answer is: encryption.
Internet Connections
Hackers can get into your device using the connection your devices are using. And not just them, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and even the government can also have interest in your activities.
To secure your connection from any unwanted people, you need to add a layer of encryption to your internet traffic. One of the viable solution is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The service will encrypt all your internet traffic and redirect them through their own servers.
Proper VPN setup with make any eavesdroppers that happen to have interest in your internet activities to see encrypted data being exchanged between your device and the VPN service your're using.
VPN services are widely available, and can be used on both mobile devices and desktop computers. But still, they aren't the perfect solution because the VPN provider you're using definitely has a full visibility of your connection (otherwise, they won't be able to secure your connection).
Free VPN services in particular have a tendency to use customer data for commercial purposes. But it's still safer than having no security at all. If you want to get the most out of a VPN service, you may want to make sure that the service you're using doesn't keep a log of your activity.
VPN, with Tor and Proxies, can also keep you anonymous on the web.
Messages And Chats
With the many people owning smart devices, they are exchanging information of all sorts. To those people that use smartphones on a daily basis, messaging apps they installed are probably the most-used apps on their devices.
The most secure messaging apps are those that have end-to-end encryption feature, which makes messages exclusively visible to only those that take part in a conversation.
Messaging apps that has security as a priority, should have end-to-end encryption feature built into it. What it does, is to encrypt any messages before they are sent, and with a shared key, only the recipient will be able to read it. So even if the network is compromised by hackers, the messages intercepted will be gibberish and unreadable.
Notable messaging apps that have end-to-end encryption include: Open Whisper Systems' Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook Messenger.
Emails
While conversation can take place fast and easy using messaging apps, many people are still sending and receiving emails.
Email is still the de facto way of data exchange for many people, mainly in businesses. If our emails are compromised, hackers can have a clear road to do even more damage.
The first and and the most obvious thing to do to secure your email, is to use a strong password. If that is not enough, or when it's possible, you should enable two-factor authentication. But in case your account does get breached, you still have another option you can use.
Using encryption, you can add another layer of security over your data. Using end-to-end encryption, your email will be encrypted before being sent, and only to be decrypted when it arrives to the recipient. As long as the key to encrypt and decrypt are kept safe, you can assure yourself that no one will be able to read those messages.
One of the ways to do this, is by using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). you can use PGP applications to increase the security of your email communications.
Cloud Storage
There are two forms of encryption when dealing with cloud storage services: transit and resting. When your files travel between your PC and a cloud service of your choice, the files you upload are generally encrypted with at least 128-bit secure sockets layer (SSL) technology. When the data is already uploaded, there is a less of a chance that they will have encryption. But when it does, the cloud service will likely hold the key.
And no matter how secure those cloud services market their products, they can get hacked.
To protect your files while resting in the cloud, you need to add another security layer on top of it. One example is to compress them using tools that support encryption protection features, before uploading them to your cloud storage account.
While this doesn't do anything in terms of keeping files from falling to the wrong hands, if ever your the cloud storage of your choice got hacked, your encrypted data will be meaningless to hackers. This is because encryption makes the data unreadable by normal means.
You can use products like 7Zip and Boxcryptor to do this.
Devices
After you know how to encrypt your outgoing data, you shouldn't forget to secure your devices as well. Your smartphones, laptops, memory cards, thumb drives can hold a lot of sensitive information, and encrypting them here is to make sure that your data will be safe even if the devices got lost/stolen.
Nowadays, smartphones are the computers we carry wherever we go. With high performance and a lot of functionalities, the devices aid us in doing almost anything while on the move. And in particular, they are indeed very vulnerable.
Most desktop computers and mobile operating systems support full-disk encryption. With this feature, you can encrypt everything you have on the device. By enabling it, you can protect your data although they devices that store them got stolen.
As for laptops and removable media, there are good encryption tools available to choose. For example, Windows has BitLocker which can encrypt your hard drives and removable storage. Mac OS has a native encryption tool, called FileVault.
Conclusion
There is no best solution that fits all conditions, and encryption isn't the only security solution you can opt into. But still, having an encryption is better than having none at all.
Encryption is one thing, and there are others you need to take care of, if you concern privacy on the hostile internet. From basic measures like securing your operating system by having it regularly updated and upgraded to the newest version/patch available, having antivirus and firewall active at any given moment, and others.
You also need to develop a habit of taking care wherever you are online. From only using encrypted page when filing out forms, keeping passwords hard to guess by both humans and computers, knowing how phishing schemes try to get credentials out of your willingness, etc..
Staying safe out there can be difficult, so always look over your shoulders.