Researchers’ Cyber First-Aid

Abstract

The role of research in national development cannot be over-emphasized. Research is the act of proffering solution(s) for present and future problems through knowledge contribution, seeking, and organization. The ability for one to find old or new knowledge or generate new ones, as well as follow a set of knowledge organization rules towards answering the research question(s) makes him/her, a researcher. The process and set of activities followed by the researcher have in recent times, involve knowledge exchange, collaboration, and blending, mostly through digital media, with the cloud as the main storage and linked via several, wired, wireless, hardware, and software interfaces. The described system is prone to cyber-attack and must be protected, as most research is funded by interested bodies and their outcomes are highly evident in national development. This work christened “Cyber First-Aid” is geared toward creating situational awareness of the need for researchers to protect their finished or ongoing intellectual property from hackers. The methods proposed are not best practices in the cyber security domain but easily applicable checks and solutions with Graphical User Interface applications that any researcher with minimal computer knowledge can implement in order to increase cyber hygiene and minimize intellectual property loss. Applying cyber hygiene best practices, monitoring, analysis, and scanning of data packets with protocol analyzers, packet capturers, hash key generator, and Virus Total malware search engine, scanning e-mail, downloaded files, URLs, and executable files before opening or installing, clearing browsing cache, and blocking URLs discovered to have malicious content, are tools (procedures) that make up cyber first-aid. The result of implementing these tools proved effective in the detection, prevention, and removal of attack vectors and protection of researchers’ intellectual property.