The Most Powerful Security Tool

Judging from the title of this post, one may presume that I am going to recommend some great new anti-virus software, firewall, or password manager. But that presumption would be incorrect. What most folks do not realize is that the best security tool available is free and can be used by anyone. I am talking about knowledge. The best way to protect yourself and your data is to educate yourself about the tactics used by attackers.

Too many people believe that they are secure just because they have a piece of software installed that said "Protects from viruses and hackers" on the back or the box. The problem here is, that most of the real cyber-security threats today do not exploit computer code, but rather exploit a user's lack of knowledge. It is these social engineering threats that one must be aware of. Scams in the form of phishing emails are the most prominent example of this. Do not click links in emails from people you don't know. Do not click on those "videos" that a "friend" posts on your Facebook wall asking you to download a special video player. I think you get the idea. When in doubt, do not click.

Another extremely dangerous threat and all-too-common threat to the user, is the user itself. Too many times do people use the same password for every website that they create an account at, and too often is it some easily guessable piece of information, such as a pet's name, phone number, or birthday. Creating good strong passwords is an excellent place to start for anyone looking to increase security. For example, anyone who has had their Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, or email accounts hacked, probably used a poor password made of readily available personal information. A good rule of thumb is that any password should be at least eight characters long, and should contain at least one number, punctuation and uppercase letter. Skimping on password strength is the easiest and most surefire way to get yourself "hacked."

Please take this advice into consideration next time you get a strange looking email, or need to create a new online account. Don't expect some piece of software or some company to save your cyber-bacon. Just remember that it is up to you to make sure your digital assets are protected.

Kaspersky Internet Security follow-up

After deploying the Kaspersky Internet security (KIS) suite across my entire home network, I am now ready to give it a more thorough review. I use it six computers at my house and I have little issue with it. The one feature I like about it is that you can specify and update location other than the official Kaspersky update server. The suite tends to have update every few hours and these update are often a few megabytes in size. I use my home server to download the updates, then all the other computers download the updates from it.
In the initial setup the program presents you with a choice of security level. You can choose permissive or restrictive, the latter of which I chose for my computer. I actually had to switch to permissive recently, because I found the frequent prompts to be more annoying than Windows Vista UAC. During the install process of any piece of software, KIS would prompt anywhere from 1 to 5 times to allow or deny a certain reg key or file. When I tried to run one of my games, KIS detected the game as a keylogger. Huh? What? I had to make each game a trusted application so KIS wouldnot annoy me everytime I try to run a game. Occasionally a virus database will corrupt which is fixed simply with a program update.
All complains aside, the security suite is very good. Ever since KIS has been on my computer, I have now had any security problems whatsoever. The suite's scanner always come up negative for malware, Spybot S&D also shows negative for malware.
I would highly recommend KIS for anyone looking for a security suite, or if you are fed up with your current one.

Bye bye Mcafee Security Suite

I have been using the Mcafee internet security suite for about a year. I think that overall is a user friendly piece of software, it is not great for power users like myself. Its virus detection and removal rates are not as good as other antivirus programs. I also experienced on several occasions a random "your computer is not protected" in which the programs firewall and anti-virus components had shut off. Clicking the fix button always turned them back on, but I never could figures out why they did that. I'm not the only one to have that happen. My friend tells me that his Mcafee randomly turns off on him too. Additionally the user interface is great for novices, however I had a difficult time navigating the programs over-simplified menu system.
This year I will be switching all the computers in my house over to Kaspersky Internet Security 2009. I already have it installed on my computer and I am currently evaluating it so that I can get used to it. Later I will write a post with more details on Kaspersky and my experience with it.