New Year Security Resolutions

Eight ways to stay safe in 2005

•	Stop smoking
•	Drink no more than fourteen alcohol units a week
•	Reduce circumference of thighs by 3 inches using anticellulite diet

No wait, that's Bridget Jones. Here are my new year's resolutions:

Educate myself

I am going to find out something about IT security that I didn't know or find challenging. Probably how to digitally encrypt and sign emails.

Train staff

I plan to spend a couple of hours with each one of them explaining how to run a virus check, how to avoid scams, spams, spoofs and crims on the internet and what they should do if the computer stops doing what they expect it to do other than call me in a panic.

Update security plan

I'm upgrading my server in January so this is a good time to review my security plan. I'll do an audit, make sure all my computers are up to date, review the latest advice on security and update the plan.

Do a security audit

I'll run Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer on all the computers at home and implement any recommendations. I'll also make sure that they are being backed up properly and have the latest updates and virus signatures installed.

Change my passwords

Changing passwords is a pain so it's best to do it in a logical way. I'm going to make a list of all the websites and programs that need passwords and then go through and change them in one go. Then I'm going to make a note in the diary to do it again in a couple of months' time.

Do a backup

I'm going to make a complete off-site archive of all my work and I'm going to get a new tape drive so that I can do daily incremental backups and weekly offsite backups. At the moment, it's a bit hit and miss with a removable hard disk.

Spring clean my PC

I'm going to scan for bad sectors on my hard disk, defragment them and uninstall all the crazy programs and games that I installed over the previous year. I want to free up some space. I'm going to take my copy of Civilisation to the charity shop so I can get some work done in 2005.

Check my locks and windows

Well, metaphorically speaking. It's worth making sure that your computer is physically safe as well as electronically protected. I'm going to check that my insurance covers my burgeoning family of servers, laptops, PDAs and smartphones and I'm going to make sure that I take my laptop lock with me whenever I take my portable away from home.

Well, that's me. What are your New Year security resolutions?