There are many different ways to help identify how safe your computer is. There is no way to completely make your risk zero, but you can do quite a bit to ensure your computer is safe from most issues and attacks. One thing you should always do is back up your data. Whether you are on your personal computer or doing work on your business laptop, you need to ensure if an incident were to happen, you have all of your data backed up to a separate location This could be to a cloud service, a separate site for your business, or even to a storage device such as a USB. This doesn’t necessarily guarantee your computer is safe, but it does ensure the data you had previous to an incident or an attack is saved and most likely unaffected. Another idea is to implement a firewall. a firewall can be software, hardware, or even a mixture of both and it’s basically a system that holds and enforces a set of rules for the network you are on. So if there is a rule to only allow traffic coming in from one website, everything else will be blocked from the internet and other networks except for what is stated in the rules for the firewall. This helps to limit the amount of traffic that comes and goes from the network which also helps limit any malicious attempts from sites or devices that may not be known by the network. In addition to the firewall implementation, you should make yourself aware of what ports are open on your device and which ones are ok to close off. This will help limit the routes that attackers will try and use to enter your network unauthorized. A couple of other simple techniques would be to make sure you don’t visit any untrusted sites and of course don’t fall for the phishing sites and emails. Making sure you only visit sites you know to be trusted and verified ensures you are not being tricked into being a part of an attacker’s trap. Making sure you don’t’ open or fall for any phishing emails or site follows the same logic as before. If it seems too good to be true or someone seems like they are giving things away for free with no catch, there is always a catch. All of these are very simple but effective ways to ensure you keep your computer safe and free from most attacks and hackers.