Security Archives - Page 2 of 4

Speaking of WordPress Security

December 7, 2011 by Michael Carnell

On Tuesday, December the 13th, I will be speaking at the Charleston WordPress User Group meeting. This is part one of a two part session entitled, “Securing WordPress”. Since WordPress enjoys the position of being one of the most widely used web platforms, it is also one of the most attacked. From installation to operation … Read more

3-2-1 Backup!

August 9, 2010 by Michael Carnell

I got another message today from someone who has lost files due to hardware malfunction. That makes the sixth person in the last two weeks. Seems that as fast as I can get people using proper backup, other people’s machines are failing.

To that end, let’s review the 3-2-1 backup strategy. This, at least, should be followed for all of your important files and documents. And by important I mean anything you care at all about losing.

3 – Your important files should exist in three different places. This could be your computer, your spouses computer, an external drive, a burned DVD, a remote backup, a friend’s house, whatever. Just three distinct copies of the files.
2 – Those files should be on at least two different types of media. Media can be hard drive, DVD, memory card or stick, or even original paper or film.
1 – At least one of those copies should be maintained off-site. That is away from the site of the original. Preferably in a different city or state. Think about common natural disasters. Off-site should be out of reach of those natural disasters.

An external hard drive is excellent for one of your backups. Time Machine on the Mac makes this a no-brainer, and there are some good software packages for Windows, such as Acronis True Image. Drive space has come way down in price, and an external drive is easy to pickup and take with you in case of emergency. An external drive such as the Western Digital Passport 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive is a great choice. Western Digital drives are solid and dependable and they have a good company backing them up. Now is not the time to try to find the cheapest thing you can – unless you want to regret that decision later when there is a failure.

So You Got A New PC …

December 25, 2009 by Michael Carnell

Congratulations, you got a new PC for Christmas. Or maybe you bought a new one for your business before the end of the year tax season runs out. Either way, do you know what the first thing you should do is? I mean after taking it out of the box, admiring its awesome shine and plugging it in. That’s right, you should make sure the anti-virus software is in place and up-to-date.

If your machine didn’t come with any protective software, or if you don’t like what it came with, there are some great alternatives available for free download. Note that most of these have both free and paid versions. Even if you would like the extra features available from the paid version, I would recommend trying out the free editions first. You may find out that the software doesn’t suit your exact needs or that the free version would do everything you want.

Virus AVG Antivirus – “No-frills protection to meet your basic security needs.” This is the AV software I recommend most often and the one I use on my own machines.

ClamWin – ClamWin is a Free Antivirus program for Microsoft Windows 7 / Vista / XP / Me / 2000 / 98 and Windows Server 2008 and 2003. ClamWin is open source, so you can even get the code behind the product. An excellent product that is constantly updated and monitored by the open source community. There is even a similar product available for the Mac.

Microsoft Security Essentials – “Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.” Microsoft finally started producing security software for Windows, and it is actually quite good. Also, of course, coming from Microsoft it integrates quite well into the Windows environment.

Kill Junk Calls on the iPhone

September 10, 2009 by Michael Carnell

I really hate sales calls, campaign calls, and solicitation calls. Getting them on my regular home phone is bad enough, but getting them on my cell phone really drives me nuts. Out of the box, you can’t block annoying callers on an un-jailbroken iPhone, but you can make them less of a pain. I will show you my method first, and then tell you about a few alternatives.

1. Create a contact named “Blacklist”. We don’t care about all the details of the contact, just that it has a recognizable name and is a place to store number. I make this a company contact with the name of the contact as just “Blacklist”.

2. Give the contact you created the following picture, or any other ugly picture you desire.

3. Next we want to assign that contact a custom ringtone, but first we have to get that ringtone to your phone. The ringtone I use is one called “silence“. Click to open it with iTunes or download it and put it in iTunes.

4. Now that you have the contact created and the ringtone in iTunes, sync your iPhone.

5. Almost there, just go into your Blacklist contact and set its custom ringtone to be the one you just uploaded.

Software Firm Faces Scrutiny

September 5, 2009 by Michael Carnell

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids’ online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children’s chat messages, and sell the marketing data gathered.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games.

The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids. “This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology,” said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. “You don’t put children’s personal information at risk.”

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids’ information at risk, since the program does not record children’s names or addresses. But the software knows how old the kids are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.