IT security - Tag Archive

IT Security Column Competition

2 Replies Christopher Roberts

Alan Tay is one of Technology Bloggers writers, and to date has published 6 articles, and loads of comments. Alan runs his own blog on IT Security, and has recently launched a great competition, (to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of his blog) that he has asked me to write about.

Alan is hoping to get some sponsors to provide him with some great prizes, but has also offered $100 of his own cash to the winner. Alan stresses in his article about the competition, that it is not a free giveaway, but a competition, whereby the author who is able to write the best article for his site will be rewarded.

IT Security Column's Logo

Alan's blogs logo

To enter Alan’s competition, you need to write an article for his site – which is based around IT Security. After his approval, your article will go live on his site.

The winner of the competition will be the person who’s article drives the most traffic to Alan’s blog. Alan says that the article he will choose as the winner is the one which his readers love the most, the one which gets shared the most via the social web, the one Google ranks highest and the one the content sponsors like the most.

The competition officially opens on the 6th of March, and the last entry date is the 15th of March. The winner of the competition will be announced on the 22nd of April 2012.

I hope to hold a competition to celebrate Technology Bloggers 1st birthday soon, so stay tuned for that competition too 🙂

Will you be entering Alan’s contents to try to win his $100 and any other prizes he may get from sponsors? I will be 🙂

UPDATE: I came second in Alan’s competition, winning $30 and a copy of Auslogic Disk Defrag Pro! My thanks go to Alan, as well as to everyone who read my article, commented and voted 🙂

Does Security Have to be Technical?

14 Replies Alan

I had been a software engineer for at least 3 years specializing in digital security. A month ago, I attended a small workshop which talked about IT Security for corporate and the speaker said this somewhere in the middle of the workshop:

“Security is a process. It does not have to be really technical and the most important part is the process.”

I stunned for a while and suddenly my mind wondered away from the workshop deeply thinking, what is the speaker trying to deliver? I started this serious thinking simply because it is not said by some non-technical or sales person. Instead, the person speaking in front of me is a Certified Ethical Hacker.

A padlock key on a keyboardAt the end of the workshop, I begin to understand what he is trying to deliver. After 3 years of writing programs for the benefit of security, I turned out saying that security is a process. Why would I say that? Look around us. All the tech that you need to protect yourself from cyber crime is there. Anti-virus, firewall, anti keylogger, parental control, password manager and many more are all available in the software market. There is no reason for us to say in terms of technology, we are not good enough in security.

What makes so many of us a victim of computer or internet threat is the lack of proper process in computer and internet security. Security is not a short process where you only apply if you need it. For instance, you don’t only apply security when you had just downloaded a file from an unknown site which required a security scan.

Security is an end to end process. This means that the moment your computer boots up, security should be applied until the time your computer shuts down. People usually failed to stay secure simply because they don’t apply security from the very start. Agree?

So what’s your view? Do you still think that security has to be something technical?

Are Antivirus and Firewall Sufficient for Good Security?

19 Replies Alan

Whenever people talk about computer and internet security, they talk about malware which consists of virus, trojan, worms, spyware and many more. When they come to talk about the solution for those threats, the solution is to get an antivirus and firewall to do the work.

The question now is, are they sufficient for a good computer and internet security? I would say ‘No’. It is very irresponsible to put the blame into that awesome software when you become a victim of malware infection. I believe that software like antivirus and firewall are there to help you in achieving good security, but not creating some sort of plasma shield to you.

The reasons why you have a poor security

As I said, you can’t blame the software for being too poor as the reason that you to get infected. Part of the reason why you are infected can be several below.

You are too careless when handling incoming links from email

Incoming links from emails especially from an unknown sender are usually malicious. They don’t lead to valuable site but either phishing site or malicious site. If you happen to land on a malicious site, your computer will most probably infected with virus, trojan, or worm the next minute.

If you don’t update and patch your operating system, the wounded area is the target for hackers

Sad to say, there is no such thing such as perfect software. Software is always 95% complete where 5% is the section for bugs and vulnerabilities to exist. It is the matter of time whether those vulnerabilities are found.

If the creator happened to find those vulnerabilities before the bad guys, they will still able to patch the wounded area. So if you don’t update and apply the patch, you will the one targeted by hackers to exploit your vulnerabilities.

You are the owner of your computer, not the administrator

Many of us think that being the owner of the computer means being the administrator as well. But do you know that Microsoft did not design it this way for us? There is an option to create a Standard User and there is User Account Control (UAC) so that we will use our computer in the way that we don’t have full privileges to do everything, same goes to the hacker.

A set of keysBy having a strict UAC, you will realize that every single time you run an application that might affect your System files, you will be asked for permission. The benefit here is, if a hacker tries to run an application to harm your system files, I bet you will know it as well when your UAC pops up.

My verdict to poor security

Having a bad security does not mean your antivirus is not efficient enough or your firewall is not solid enough. At times, it is the user who lacks of experience in handling computer threats. As a result, it is important to always stay alert whenever you are browsing the internet.

If you want to learn more about security, you can grab my copy of eBook for free on how to Build Your Own Security.