Basic Cyber Hygiene Checklist for 2026
A short, practical checklist to start the year with your business's core security basics in good shape.
At the start of a new year, it's worth a quick sanity check against the fundamentals rather than only reacting to whatever the latest headline threat happens to be. Most incidents we see still trace back to a handful of basics slipping, not exotic new attack techniques.
Confirm MFA is enabled on email, VPN, and any critical business applications. Confirm backups are running on schedule and that you've tested a restore within the last year, not just watched the backup job report "success." Confirm every device on your network — including any Windows 10 holdouts — is on a fully supported, patched operating system.
Finally, take stock of who has administrative access to what, and remove access for anyone who's changed roles or left the business but was never fully offboarded. These basics aren't exciting, but consistently maintained, they close off the overwhelming majority of real-world incidents.
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