To protect your device to the max, physical devices can be used in authentication to protect your devices such as a computer.  Etoken is a physical device kept by the user that stores the data physically on the device. There are also smart cards and RFID ( which were mentioned in the notes.) There are a handful of ways to tell if your computer is safe but it is hard if you don’t know the proper way. The first way to keep your device safe is to check your settings. You should access your passwords to make sure they are strong and don’t have any information that is easy to detect. Now, when creating a password you can’t use your first or last name and have certain criteria that need to be met in order to protect your device to the max possible. This makes it harder for passwords to be exposed. Another way to keep your computer safe is to test your firewall. “A firewall keeps hackers from seeing your computer online when they’re searching for victims. Even if they know where your computer is, the firewall keeps them out.” “A wrong port setting can send up a flare revealing your computer or give hackers an opportunity to slip past. If you have a virus, it might have changed your settings without you knowing.” A way that nobody really thinks of is permanently deleting files. Even if you delete your files they don’t disappear they stay on a hard drive for a while and hackers can access them and retrieve them with the knowledge they have of technology. Having your social media accounts private can help prevent hacking. When they are public anyone can see what you post and have easier access to stealing your pictures and personal information. To sign up for social media you have to put in a lot of your personal information such as full names, phone numbers, birth dates, and more. Overall, there are a lot of cautions you can take to prevent hackers from hacking but it is nearly impossible to fully protect your computer.

5 ways to find out if your computer is secure. Komando.com. (2020, April 22). Retrieved March 16, 2022, from https://www.komando.com/tech-tips/5-ways-to-test-your-computers-security-2/9821/