Practical security guidance

Guides

Straightforward security and privacy advice for people who have things to do.

Plain-English explanations of security terms you may encounter elsewhere — because nobody should need a technical dictionary to stay safe.

What to do after a suspicious login, compromised account, phishing mistake or possible device infection — without making the situation worse.

A practical starting point for protecting people, accounts, devices and sensitive material without making the job harder.

Updates, restricted access, careful handling of files and recoverable backups are more useful than trying to recognise every piece of malware.

Use passkeys where you can; where you cannot, use unique passwords, a password manager and two-step verification.

Modern phishing can look completely professional. Concentrate on the request, the destination and the consequences rather than spelling mistakes.

Choose communications around the risk, minimise what you retain and remember that protecting a source involves more than encrypting messages.

Hotel, airport and café Wi-Fi is usable for ordinary work — but know when mobile data, a hotspot or an organisational VPN is the better choice.

Find out what strangers can learn about you online and reduce information that could enable doxxing, impersonation, harassment or unwanted tracking.

Practical security for home, location, hotel and hybrid working without recreating the office around every laptop.

AI can be genuinely useful — but treat what you upload as data you are handing to another service, and verify anything important that comes back.

Keep the browser updated, use modern protections and judge what a site is asking you to do — not whether it displays a padlock.

Protect accounts, reduce unnecessary exposure and think about what posts reveal about you, your colleagues and your work.

Reduce what you carry, prepare devices before you leave and plan for border searches, loss, theft and hostile networks.