If you are happy with your life, I applaud you and urge you to continue doing what you are doing. It is incredible to feel that way, I am so happy for you! This article is for anyone who doesn’t feel that same way. If you don’t feel happy right now, something has to change.

First things first; decide what your priorities are. What is most important to you? Is it your religion? Your family? Your degree? Whatever it is, your decisions must revolve around keeping your priorities straight. Now, with that in mind, here are nine tips to help you change your life.

 

Tip 1: Journaling Your Thoughts

You may have kept a diary as a teenager so that you could cope with your overwhelming adolescent emotions, but you can also do this as an adult. Buy a journal or diary where you can write down your thoughts each day. You may want to create a list of goals in your journal each morning. Alternatively, you might want to write in your diary each night. Whatever works best for you!

 

Tip 2: Consider Your Spirituality

It might be a good time to turn to spirituality. The concept of spirituality is different for everyone, and it might include attending traditional religious services, or you might want to seek alternative types of spirituality. You can find books and DVDs about spirituality at your local public library, or online. Many religions will even deliver a free Bible right to your door.

 

Tip 3: Set New Goals

If you feel like you’re not accomplishing enough in your life, try setting some new goals. Forget about New Year’s Resolutions – those rarely come to fruition. Set some SMART goals that can really be accomplished, and work hard to achieve them.

 

Tip 4: Daily Physical Activity

When you are living a sedentary lifestyle, it will change your body’s chemistry, affecting your mind. Less energy one day leads to even less the next. Find a way to enjoy additional physical activity on a daily basis by joining a local gym or getting involved in amateur sports. The first week or two might leave you feeling really sore, but that soreness will soon pass and become invigorating.

 

Tip 5: Lose Some Weight

If you are at a healthy weight, disregard this. There is a difference between being a healthy, plus-sized human and being obese. Obesity causes a myriad of health problems, and while eating a healthy diet and exercising can help you to lose weight, it is not always enough. You might want to consider getting a weight loss procedure, such as a gastric balloon. Stomach balloons are inflatable items that help the stomach to feel fuller so that you don’t want to eat large amounts of food. Pair that with some health coaching, and you’ll be on a good track.

 

Tip 6: Move to a New Location

If you love the snow, then you shouldn’t live in a warm climate year-round. Alternatively, if you despise cold weather, long winters will make you feel terrible. Moving to a new location may seem frightening, but it is one way to change your life completely. Also, it gives you the opportunity to start fresh in a new place with new people.

 

Tip 7: Begin to Socialize More

Rather than staying home most of the time, you can begin to socialize more by getting involved in community activities or enjoyable group hobbies. Look for clubs that you can join to learn about birds, postage stamps, or genealogy. Create a book club so that you can invite friends to your home to talk about the newest novel.

 

Tip 8: Avoid Accumulating Possessions

If you have a house filled with electronic gadgets and other items, then it is time to reduce the amount of possessions that you own. You may have gone into debt to pay for all of these things because you wanted to fill an emotional void, but by getting rid of the clutter, you can begin to focus on the items that really make you happy.

 

Tip 9: Change Your Career

When you are in a job that you hate for several hours a day, it can begin to drain you emotionally. Allowing work to cause you anger, anxiety, and depression is not okay. The career path that you selected when you were younger may no longer fulfill your needs, so you should think about your other employment options.

Comments »

Healthcare and retail are most likely the first two industries you think of when it comes to security hacks or breaches. They’re stocked full of data diamonds waiting for the taking — social security numbers, addresses, birthdays, credit card numbers, bank accounts, and more. But what some people may not realize, higher education institutions house just about the same valuable information. Student records hold payment information, medical records, social security numbers and more. And students aren’t the only ones vulnerable, faculty, staff and alumni also store sensitive data in their files on campus systems. On the black digital market, a university record can run for up to $200 making this intellectual property extremely lucrative for cyber criminals.

 

Not only are higher education institutions a gold mine of personal information, their IT infrastructures and network security tools can be a nightmare to manage. Universities and colleges are a hot bed for bring-your-own-devices–think of all the laptops students bring to classes. Not to mention all the other devices that students, faculty and departments use to further their teaching techniques. Classrooms are moving more towards digital formats and as they do more and more unrestrained and unmanaged devices are hopping onto networks giving hackers a massive attacking surface with thousands of access points. And unfortunately, as more and more millennials start using social media platforms, they continue to open themselves up to risk and once a device is connected to a network, it’s a virtual backdoor into the entire IT infrastructure of an institution.

 

In 2012, a student from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln hacked into their PeopleSoft-based system (higher education software used from anything from payroll to ordering) and accessed over 650,000 personal records alone. In the 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report from Verizon, there were over 400 cybersecurity incidents in the educational sector last year alone with 73 of them resulting in data leaks. And developers and software companies aren’t focused on security for educators, for them it’s more about usability and functionality due to the wide-range of users who access them. On top of this, most attacks or malicious acts go undetected since attackers can easily log into the system as a registered user and then gain access to the common system functionality.

 

Additionally, universities and research institutions strive for an open flow of exchange of information and ideas, which basically means no defense for information. The user-friendly uniqueness of educational systems often tend to be what puts them at greatest risk. Not only that, but many institutions lack a well-educated security staff, or a full team at all.

 

The best way to prevent attacks and begin to protect their data is for institutions to first of all, start recognizing they are targets. Then it requires investing in top security defenses, which will require identifying their weaknesses. Other components that will need to be implemented into an institution’s plan of defense is to test and hunt for threats. Some of the top threats that organizations face are user education, cloud security, phishing, governance over data security, unsecured personal devices, and identity and access management.

 

IT teams and CIO’s can help reduce security risks through better user management and training, a proactive defense approach and more secure and effective collaboration among institutions. Other big threats are insecure settings, unencrypted connections, patch management, functionality, insecure trusted connections, default usernames and passwords, open interfaces that enable remote management, and access control measures. Taking into account all of these threats, security teams can better plan how to prevent data breaches.

Comments »