With the dramatic and public rise of global hacking collectives and increased intrusion even over encrypted networks it is easy to see why reading a Computer Security Blog is quickly becoming a regular habit for many people. Everyone who uses the internet now needs to be concerned with being targeted by sophisticated hacking attempts to gain control of their computers or get access to private personal or financial data to be sold to third party companies. It hardly matters whether you are a CEO of a major multinational corporation or Joe Shmo working at a burger joint, malicious hackers want access to your computer, your bank account, and the private details of your life. They want to know who you are, sell your social security number, access your bank account, and enslave your PC to help them attack bigger and more juicy targets.
Unfortunately that is simply the reality of the internet these days. It does not mean that every internet user should always live in fear of being hacked at any random moment, but it does mean that we should take steps to be prepared and protect ourselves from unwanted intrusion. Reading a Computer Security Blog is a great way to learn how to best protect your personal computer and your online accounts in order to make such an attack more difficult and less attractive to hackers. Technology is always evolving, and as virus protection and anti-hacking measures become more sophisticated and successful the hackers are forced to change their tactics and tools to remain successful. As a result it is important to stay fairly up-to-date on the latest developments in cyber security to keep yourself and your information protected.
It is not vital that you read these blogs every day, but rather that you check in once in a while to get a good idea of recent developments. What viruses have emerged targeting your particular demographic? What new security measures can you take to protect yourself against next generation hackers? What steps are considered to be the basic protocol if you are to ward off the low level attacks that target everyone at one time or another? Failure to stay informed could be as inconvenient as having your social media profile spam your friends, or as horrible as logging onto your bank account to find it empty, or a fraud alert from somebody stealing your identity. If you don’t stay informed about cyber security you could either be inconvenienced…or devastated.
Being in charge of your IT department’s ordering is never an enviable position. Between dealing with the demands of your supervisors and negotiating bulk orders with the sellers, you barely feel a sense of accomplishment after a job well done. By did you realize that purchasing used Mitel equipment, instead of new, will save you a boatload of cash and make you look good at the budget meetings? An increasing number of IT workers are realizing the benefits of buying refurbished materials for their work projects instead of paying premium prices for items out of the box. When a good warranty and reliable service are standing behind used merchandise, what reason is there not to at least consider the option? Online retailers are stepping to the plate and going head to head with larger companies, giving the buyer more options and better prices than ever before. Networking equipment, especially for larger needs, can be seriously expensive and delay improvements because of prohibitive costs. Just because you have the manpower to overturn an office’s wiring doesn’t mean you have the funds to do it. By seizing the opportunity to go through alternative channels for your product purchases, however, you can streamline your entire operation for a fraction of the typical cost.
Pitching a project can be difficult if you don’ have all the details about what it will ultimately entail. You can wax on about the virtues of CAT6 cables and IBM servers but it doesn’t really mean anything to your less teach-savvy peers who are more concerned with prices rather than benefits. Instead of trying to get the latest and greatest iteration of a product line from some global innovator, why not talk about the virtues of used Eltek Valere equipment? It certainly doesn’t ring of the same brand power as other products do, but it can prove just as reliable and come at far less of an expense. Everyone talks about getting what you pay for, as if loyalty to a certain company is a guarantee for quality in all your future purchase, but it’s ultimately a myth. The real value of getting what you pay for is doing a healthy amount of research instead of running to spend the most money possible on a product that’s nothing more than average. Just because something has an Apple logo on it doesn’t mean it’s the best component to compliment the rest of your network layout. AirPort devices comprising your entire access point plan won’t be the easiest think to work with when your using a non-Unix based system on your server stacks.
Shopping around will serve you greatly in your effort to turn over the office’s network, as will assessing what issues might be affecting it as it stands. If you are noticing spikes in activity during business hours accompanied by an inordinate amount of bandwidth loss, it won’t be long until employees start complaining about how the, “Internet is going so slow.” While your armchair computer scientists may not be able to articulate the problem in a more eloquent way, you know that you will need to address the issue before it gets worse. As memory in machines increases, along with hard drive capacities, so will file sizes that become important for conducting everyday business. More people will be sending gigabyte attachments and the network will greatly suffer as a result. You won’t need to jump at pricey data service units to connect to the T1 line, though, because used Teltrend equipment can handle the task just as effectively. It will help to ensure that your incoming data line is being utilized to its fullest potential as well as curbing the number of emails you get everyday about how it takes forever to download a file from an email account. The more you do to stop a problem before it has the opportunity to occur, the easier your life will become.
Your life would also probably be easier if you could afford a remote management service to let you know when servers are having issues or the company website is down. Unfortunately, these third-party firms can be exceedingly expensive. You also run the risk of appearing redundant to your employers when they are paying two different entities for essentially the same purpose. Why does an outside business have to keep an eye on the servers instead of the staff they pay to do just that? Arm yourself with your own software and hardware solutions to achieve offsite capability and save money.
Encrypted browsing has been around in many forms over the years, but since the late 1990s HTTPS, or hypertext transfer protocol secure, has emerged as one of the top ways to conduct business on the internet in a secure manner. In fact, it has grown so popular that most individuals on the internet have used secure HTTP protocol when logging onto their bank accounts or paying bills over the internet, whether they realize it or not. This is because secure HTTP is actually a great way to ensure that your communications while on the protocol are encrypted and secure, and help prevent malicious access to the network or snooping in on the events and transactions that occur there. This is why it is so popular with financial transactions and secretive corporate communications as a way to provide extra security and privacy.
However even HTTPS has its faults. While it is recognized as one of the top ways to encrypt your communications and protect the privacy of individuals and businesses using it, the secure hyptertext transfer protocol is still vulnerable to attacks from sources within the protocol itself. It is extremely possible to transfer infected files from one user to another on the secure hypertext transfer protocol, and this is indeed becoming one major way for hackers to target and attack high value targets like big businesses and bank accounts.
Some companies have recently begun offering software that will allow users to scan all communications coming in to them through the secure protocol just as they would scan information sent to them over the world wide web. One of the goals is to be able to scan entire networks worth of data being exchanged over secure hypertext transfer protocol communications in order to keep an entire company secure from malicious internal invasion by hackers. These services are still particularly expensive at the moment, but as the protocol gains widespread use by individuals and small businesses alike the demand should result in lower service charges for subscriptions that what is currently seen. The time is swiftly coming when all internet users will need to be fluent in the problems that arise using secure hypertext transfer protocol in order to combat these intrusions and protect individual privacy yet again.
Concerns about Global hacking rings have been rising in recent years due to an increase in high visibility attacks that have rocked industries and governments around the world. With a few keystrokes hackers have managed to paralyze businesses and interfere with government operations in dozens of countries for various purposes, leading many individuals and organizations to take cyber security much more seriously. Many different firms are boosting their efforts to combat the rising tide of hacking and the new security threats that they present, but as of yet no real solution is in sight.
Global hacking collectives are as diverse as they are widespread. They range in formation from shadowy groups attempting to steal personal information and industrial secrets to ideologically driven hactivists attempting to wage a digital war on corporations and governments alike. Sometimes they use stealth to hack into a system; other times they trick users into clicking on infected websites that download trojans and viruses onto their computers. When attacking individual users and personal computers the purpose is often to get access to financial information or create a zombie computer enslaved to the hacker to be used in attacks against larger and more powerful security systems in the future. Corporate or government victims are often targeted to gain access to vital information or massive amounts of data, which can be sold or used in industrial espionage as the hackers see fit.
As a result of these widespread and indiscriminate attacks many people and even more businesses are turning to complex and expensive security measures to protect their information. Passwords have evolved from catch phrases and personal quotes to long and intricate combinations of numbers, letters and special characters. The average virus protection now checks emails, scans websites, and often even blocks access to particular websites before the user can access them and download the infected files. Our security measures are beginning to get more and more restrictive and draconian as people adapt to a digital wild West and learn to deal with the fact that anyone–and often everyone–is the target of random malicious attacks on a regular basis.
All too many people have little understanding about how much danger their Network Information is in from malicious intrusion by computer hackers. It can be easy to write off hackers as a problem for larger companies and individuals who visit risky websites, but the truth is that just about anybody can be and will be specifically targeted by hackers looking to gain access to their network and learn what it contains. This is why it is so important that everyone, from the biggest business to the random personal computer user, do their best to protect their computers and protect their networks from unwanted access by using up to date virus protection, encryption, and other network security services.
While in many cases hackers are simply out to turn a computer into a slave PC that they can use on larger scale attacks, it is still very common for a hacker to target a network to snoop around and see what kind of information they can access. Digging through your Network Information can provide a clever hacker with all kinds of information, especially account information that can allow them to elevate their access to your network and dig in even deeper. Once they have the slightest level of access to your network they can often find ways to grant themselves more access, until they are able to access your financial reporting, or user accounts, or private documents tucked away in a folder.
However all of that can be stopped by taking simple measures to protect your computer and your network. The basic level of protection is to create complex passwords that are difficult to crack using automated technology, using lots of numbers, special characters, and acronyms rather than simple phrases or number combinations that are easy to remember. Secondly, make sure that extra important information is tucked away behind additional levels of security. Always encrypt your data whenever possible. Make sure you use powerful security services, such as a good antivirus and scanning software to detect nascent threats. Never visit risky websites or download unverified or suspicious files, period. Steps as easy as this can make all the difference between being vulnerable and offering a challenging front that will turn away all but the most determined hackers.