Having just read about this is really is very scary to know that any inforamtion that you might type in to your computer on My space, Bebo, or anything hackers can get that information and read through it to try and find your passwords to get in to other information that you might have on line. I never thought that they could do these things it really makes you sit up and think about your passwords and to have different ones for everything that you sign into and also have throw away email adresses also. And finding out that banks are starting to move away from these kinds of security questions is really worrying.
PASSWORDS AND CRACKING PASSWORDS
When I log into my work computer we have a password that has upper and lower case letters and numbers and every 6 or 7 months we are sent another instruction telling us that it has changes this is to make sure that we don't become to used to it and also to protect the system that we are on.
There are hackers out there that spend a great deal of time trying to get into your personal details especially bank accounts and they have software that can help them do this.
There is a company called Elcomsoft that has a password cracking software for sell and it can carry out dictionary and brute-force attacks on your computer.
Dictionary attacks, means that the computer goes through the whole dictionary trying to pick out the words that can crack your password. And Brute-force is that it works out every single charactor in your password until it get's it. Very much like the film wargames when you watch that it get's every number if I remember rightly.
Just always remember to mix letters up and use upper and lower case and change your password regularly.
EMAIL ENCRYPTION
This is a great idea, it very James Bond, you have to have to keys to work this, one has to be a private key that is only know to yourselve the other is a public key that you can give out to your friends, family and people that you want to have it. They can send you a message and they can encrypt it using your public kay and you can decrypt it using your private key. And what that means is that anyone who trys to read you information will not be able to as they will not have your private key details.
SECURITY SUITES
A security suit inables you to put protect your computer from a number of threats rather than installing things one by one.
There are alot of these kinds of products on the market by I have chosen two that I am going to tell you a wee bit about.
One is called Panda and the other is Steganos 7.0.4
- Panda
- detection of more than a million viruses and other threats, offering protection far higher than traditional antiviruses
- anti spyware, anit phishing , firewall, identity protection backups anti spam and parental control.
- Steganos 7..04
- easy to use encrypton software
- encryt and stores upto 256GB of data in a safe and real time securing large data and picture files
- internet trace destructor
- secure data transport free
- shedder and deep cleaning eliminate unwanted files
PROXY SERVERS
we have serves that we use at work and they are in our main office at church road and also at the counicl headquarters in Barrhead and Eastwood park. These servers are updated and backed up every night by our IT departments.
A proxy server sits between a computer and the websites it acesses it strips the IP address this is address can be used to identify you or your computer. And replaces it with a fake address so that they cannot see your real address. Anonymous surfing this redirects you through secure servers and protects you against phising and pharming sites by displaying warnings.
CONTENT FILTERING
Content filtering we is the library have content filtering on our machines, what this enables as to do is to block sites that have information or pictures that we think is unsuitable for our users to use in the library. We have had situations thik this in the past actually where the website that the person wishes to be used has been blocked and there is nothing wrong with the site and we have had to phone up IT to get it unblocked. This would come under the heading keyword
filtering.
Net Nanny
This is a great thing to have on your computer, as we are all aware kids are very ahead of use when it comes to going on to the internet, they get taught it at school and they are the ones that end up teaching us how to work the thing that sits in the corner at home that we can't work unless they are their to show us, so there are loads of kids out there logging on to their computers, looking up websites and going into chat rooms and talking to God knows how and the only time that we hear or aware that this is something that we should be worried about is when there is an incident in the news about a young girl going away with a man 3 times her age, after talking to her on the internet. So this software allows the parent to be in control of the situation at all times and also allows then to check up on what sites they have been going into even when they are out of the room or busy elsewhere in the house.
CONTENT RATING
The Internet Content Rating Assocation allows web master and content creators to label their contents by language, violence and other potentially harmful materials, This helps parents and teachers to control what children acces on the internet.
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