Basic Physical Security

Protecting your Computer

To protect your computer against theft or unauthorized physical access to your data:

  • Lock down your PC or employ an alarm system.
  • Consider installing access control software.

Safeguarding your Data

To safeguard your computer and protect your data against damage or loss due to power outages or sudden fluctuations of power:

  • Use a power bar or other similar equipment with surge protection.
  • If you experience static electricity problems where you use your computer, install an anti static device such as an anti static mat, and touch the mat before you touch your keyboard or computer.
  • Save your work-in-progress frequently.
  • Backup regularly (at least once a week).
  • Store all of backup copies of your data in a secure place - ideally, off-site or away from home, but at least removed from where you normally work. Safe storage places include locking cabinets or data safes, which are especially designed to protect portable storage media against destruction or damage from heat, smoke particles and humidity.

Backing-up Your System

The more frequently you back up, the more information you will be able to recover should the worst occur. Given the little time and effort required, backing-up your system really is cheap insurance.

Most backup systems offer "Full" and "Incremental" backups. Though a full backup takes a lot of time, if you have to completely reinstall your system, a full backup is the shortest process. Incremental backups are fast, but if you rely on them and need to recover the entire system, you will need to recover the last full backup and all the intervening incremental backups.

Running an occasional Full backup and frequent Incremental backups provides the best balance of protection and speed.

Since you may not know immediately if you've been broken into, maintaining a couple of months of backups will allow you to recover data that may have been damaged weeks ago.

Portable Storage Media Security Considerations

  • Make sure any portable storage media (such as floppy disks, CDs, USB memory keys or portable hard drives) you use in the UBC environment are free of computer viruses.
  • Use a virus scan program before using portable storage media on your PC, especially if you are connected to a Local Area Network.
  • Don't leave portable storage media lying around. When you are finished with them, lock them away.
  • Remove all sensitive or confidential data from portable storage media before discarding them, giving them to someone else, or using them again for storing new information
  • Don't distribute files on portable storage media that have had sensitive information previously written to them.
  • Don't throw away sensitive paper copies of data, grades, userlists, programs, network diagrams. Dispose of them by: shredding them!