Shut Down, Sleep or Hibernate – how vulnerable is your computer in these stages?

 

Computers can sleep, hibernate or shut down. Some people leave their computers running 24/7, while others shut down their computers the moment they step away. Laptops in particular require you to be power conscious about your habits—especially when running on the battery. Here are some differences between sleep, hibernate and shut down that will help you decide what’s right for your computer.

 

Shut Down:
A computer that is shut down uses virtually no power of course, but you have to go through the full start-up when you want to use it again. Depending on your system, this can take anything from a few seconds to several minutes. While a shut down computer is also not vulnerable to any security breaches it is most secure in this state as your device cannot be access by any remote users or other external access.

 

Sleep:
A sleeping computer uses just enough power to keep its memory active and comes back to life almost instantly when you choose to use it, making it good for when you’re not using the computer in the short term. Everything will be right where you left of, including running apps and open documents. In sleep mode the computer is, however vulnerable to malware attacks. This, however is the least secure state from a security point of view. Most devices will wake on activity, which could be from moving the mouse, software updates or network activity and this could allow access to the device without your knowledge.

 

Hibernate:
A hibernating computer saves its memory to hard drive, effectively dumping the contents of the memory to a file. Start-up is faster than after a full shut down and power use is much lower than sleep mode.

 

Hibernate is particularly useful to save battery power on computers such as laptops that aren’t plugged in. if you want to take your laptop somewhere and you don’t want to waste valuable battery power, you’ll want to hibernate it instead of putting it to sleep. This state is the best of both worlds from a security point of view. It has high security since your device cannot wake from hibernating without physical user interaction.

 

People use their computing devices differently. Some always shut down their computers and never take advantage of the convenience of the sleep and hibernate modes, while others run their computers 24/7. Shutting down your computer is always the most recommended option for security and energy efficiency if you plan to leave your computer for a day or more. An alternative would be to put your device into hibernate mode when leaving work or stepping away from your computer for prolonged periods. This ensures faster device waking and peace of mind.