Technology scares me. I consider myself lucky in that I can navigate it and make educated decisions, but at the same time I realize that I rely on hundreds of technologies every day and I don’t even know how they work!

The most frightening thing is how fast it’s all happening. I thought I would be up-to-date for much longer than my parents were, or even my peers are today. It turns out another internet-addicted generation is already steadily replacing my idea of normal.

So first, there’s my inability to stay up-to-date with everything. Now, add the following: Today’s incidents are on monetary and legal scales we couldn’t fathom decades ago. What used to be a simple virus and having to reinstall Windows is now a potentially life-altering event. Banks, electrical grids, and even governments are fighting off these attacks as we speak with resource beyond our reach. What are we supposed to do?

I have always liked being realistic: You are not as valuable as hacking a bank. Cyber-criminals aren’t personally tracking you down and following your every move; they play a numbers game. You are one of millions at risk, and you’re competing against those millions to be the least at-risk. If you keep a low profile and maintain some basic measures, your odds of an incident go down dramatically.

So the simplest, yet most effective thing I do is update my software. The security ecosystem has evolved means of communication so that a lot of things get fixed whether you hear about them or not. Each time a little nightly update comes out, you can bet that there are security fixes in there for one of those many vulnerabilities out there.

Next, use widely-used security measures backed by research. Two-factor authentication is like adding a second key to your account, requiring a second form of ID for sensitive accounts. As password manager is also practically a necessity these days. Since we’re in an age of computers trying millions of passwords on various sites, you can’t afford to re-use weak passwords to protect your information. Password managers can create strong, hard-to-guess passwords that are unique for every account and helps you bring them up with hotkeys on your computer and apps on your devices.

I also keep external hard drives to back up my sensitive information in case I ever lose a device. I treat these hard drives like modern-day filing cabinets, labeling and storing them in a safe place just in case. We learned not to put all of our eggs in one basket, and so you shouldn’t keep all of your information in one place. One catastrophe could wipe it all out.

Many of these solutions are not new, and there’s a good reason for that. Battle-tested solutions are security’s best friend, so you should go back to basics where possible. Avoid hopping on new security trends using unverified methods, because these are perfect avenues for attack. Knowing that many of the standard technologies today come from nearly half a century of mathematics and computing research helps me rest a little easier knowing I’m standing on the shoulders of people much smarter than myself.

As you can see, there’s nothing futuristic about my approach to security. It’s unreasonable to go to the extremes some of my peers go to, and fails to recognize that not all of us live in an extreme threat model where we are at risk with every connection. My measures focus protecting me against the broad attacks that happen on the web and protecting data I need to keep my life going.