In addition to purchasing anti-virus and anti-hacking software, there are a number of additional strategies you can employ on and while operating your computer to help protect against intrusions and to protect your information wherever you choose. to let it reside. Here is a list of some tips that will help you.
- Shut down or log off your computer when you’re not using it: The less time your computer is online, the less it will be seen by outsiders who can do harm to you.
- If you have more than one person in your home using your computer, set up separate “firewalled” accounts for each of them; don’t let people into your system using their own username and password.
- Keep your antivirus software as up to date as possible. Update it regularly so that you are protected against the newest viruses that have been identified and protected by your antivirus software provider.
- Increase the privacy settings on your computer. In a future lecture, I’ll show you how to update these settings if you’re using Windows 10. Please watch that video as well, and also look into updating your privacy settings in older versions of Windows if that’s what you’re running on your computer.
- Be careful when opening PDF files that you receive from external sources. Hackers and software virus writers have of late found this to be an effective platform to deliver their damage-causing payloads.
- As for emails, don’t be nosy. If you don’t know where an email came from, don’t open it. If you open an email from someone you don’t know and/or received unsolicited, please do not click on any links within the email. Executable viruses are sometimes attached to what you think is just a link to another site.
- If you have concerns about the authenticity of an email address when you’ve received an email, please check by looking at the “Details” dropdown menu that you can click next to the email name. Sometimes I’ve even taken this a step further by checking their domain email address using a domain provider to do a “Who is” lookup when I’m really wondering where something came from.
- Be careful with all downloads to your computer. Make sure you know that the source is safe and that you are on a real web page belonging to that source when you download the content. Hackers are now setting up “fake” web pages that look like real businesses to lure you into accessing you via downloads from their sites.
- Using the “cloud” for storage is risky, even in places like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. it can be hacked. Cloud storage locations seem to be the main targets for hackers. These are convenient data storage and backup locations for many, so if you want to use them, here are some tips that could save the privacy of your content there.
o The simplest protection method is to send only encrypted or compressed content there for storage. If you are using zip files, use the Zip password feature before submitting. This helps protect your content even if that site gets hacked.
o Encrypt your important files on your computer before sending them to the cloud. In fact, it’s a good idea to only store your important files on your computer in encrypted formats, even when they reside on your computer. Encryption products like MEGA and SpiderOak can help you here. If you really do work with sensitive content on a regular basis, you can also deploy products like encFS – it takes a couple of hours to install, but you can set up folders on your computer that automatically encrypt any files you move there. This folder and its subsets look and behave like normal folders on your PC, so once installed, encryption is automatic for you.
- Use of plug-ins such as web cameras and microphones. Set your privacy settings to disallow apps from using them on your PC, and turn off external microphones and webcams when not in use. It’s not that difficult for an outsider to break into most systems and take control of these devices to watch or record you doing things in and around your computer.
- If you’re on a Microsoft platform, consider installing their free app: “The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit.” Microsoft Quote: “The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) is a utility that helps prevent vulnerabilities in software from being successfully exploited. EMET achieves this goal through the use of security mitigation technologies. These technologies function as special protections and obstacles that an exploiter must overcome to exploit software vulnerabilities. These security mitigation technologies do not guarantee that vulnerabilities cannot be exploited. However, they work to make exploitation as difficult as possible EMET also provides a configurable SSL/TLS certificate pinning feature called Certificate Trust.This feature is designed to detect (and stop, with EMET 5.0) man-in-the-middle attacks that leverage Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) “.
- When you’re browsing clickable websites for content and links, look for https sites where you can, but don’t just rely on the ones at the end of the http URL. Click on the associated security box to verify the legitimacy of the security certificate details for the web page being browsed.
- Scorpion System Protection is an anti-hacking software product that you may consider purchasing. Designed to support remote access standards from Microsoft, NIST, DoD, and Homeland Security, this product will help increase the security of your computer based on government usage standards.
- Sandboxie is a protection app that you can buy for both home and business use. It’s a good place to run new software you’re worried about using, plus it has a lot of other great features. Sandboxie uses isolation technology to separate programs from their underlying operating system, preventing unwanted changes to your personal data, programs, and applications that rest safely on your hard drive.
- When browsing the Internet, never log in from your computer while you are in Administrator mode on your computer. You do not want this login information shared in cyberspace. Only access the Internet from user accounts that you have set up on your computer.
In short, implementing some or all of these ideas on your computer and in your online life will go a long way toward protecting you. That’s all for this article. Goodbye for now.