Protect Your Handheld Device
- Maintain physical protection of your handheld device at all times.
- Keep the device with you or securely locked away.
- Longwood users connecting to the university's email and calendaring services must contact the Help Desk immediately if their device is lost or stolen.
- For other users, if your device is lost or stolen you may wish to notify your service provider immediately as they may be able to remotely erase all data from the device.
- Enable only the necessary functions, features and capabilities.
- Disable unneeded services such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other wireless interfaces until they are needed.
- Prior to installing any applications or functions weigh benefits (utility provided by the application) versus risks (opening a new avenue attack on your device).
- ONLY download applications from reputable sources.
- Keep your device free of malware.
- Use device antivirus and firewall software when available.
- Install updates as they become available to fix security issues with your device.
- Do not open attachments or follow links sent from individuals you do not know as this may result in malware being installed on your device. You should also be suspicious of attachments and links sent by friends. As handheld devices become more popular they become more attractive targets for hackers.
- Only download applications from reputable sources.
- Use a strong device password or PIN.
- Choose a different password than the password you use to access the university network or other university applications.
- Set the device to automatically lock after a set period of inactivity.
- Take steps to reduce the risks associated with losing data stored on your device.
- Avoid storing confidential personal information, including user IDs and passwords, or university restricted information on a handheld device.
- If the storage of your confidential personal information or university restricted information cannot be avoided use encryption to protect the data from unauthorized access.
- Regularly backup information stored on your handheld device to another system in case your device is lost, stolen or damaged.
- Prior to disposing of a handheld device all of the data should be securely removed. Deleting information from the device is not enough!