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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Backing Up and Security

When you have a good backup routine in place, you get the benefit of a lot of peace of mind. Before you relax too much, however, there is an important security dimension to the backed up data that you have to consider. It is advisable to keep the important information in a safe and secure place. Here are some tips to help you make sure that your backed up data is as secure as possible and that your data isn't at undue risk of being compromised.

Encryption

Generally speaking, all of the data that you back up should be encrypted. Encryption ensures that it's just a bunch of garble to anyone without the correct key to unlock it. Most backup systems take care of this for you automatically these days, so you really don't have to spend a lot of time on this, in most cases. Online backup services will also encrypt data for you.

Physical Security

In order for your data to be truly secure, you have to be able to control who has access to it. This requires some sort of room security or keeping the data in a safe where it cannot be accessed by anyone without the right credentials or key. There are several solutions on the market for this need. One of the things to keep in mind is that any physical security you provide should also insulate your data from natural disasters. It's not enough to have your backups in a room if that room is in danger of burning down in a fire, for instance.

Access Control

This is a concern that is closely related to physical security but that's a bit different in some regards. The access control for your backup system usually regards how you prevent access to our servers, drives, tapes and everything else involved in the process. A skilled and nefarious individual can be very creative about how they get access to your data. For instance, if you secure your data tapes but have the tape drive unsecured, someone could easily slip their own tape in the drive and backup-meaning copy-all of your files and take off with them.

Backing up is a process that requires you to pay considerable attention to security. If you're using online backup services, you don't really have to worry about safes or security media, but you do have to make sure that the software used to backup and restore information is secured for unauthorized usage.

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5 Tips to Protect Your Information From Online Scavengers

Search engines are hungry for YOUR information. After all, this is the digital information age, and many businesses have found that your personal information is actually worth a lot of money. So here are our best 5 tips for minimizing the information online databases collect about you, and how to limit the amount of unwanted content that will show up in your Google search.

1. Skip The Details

When you sign up as a user for a website or any online service, provide the least amount of information you actually need to register. If at all possible, only include your name and a contact email address. This can be a catch 22- in order to rank web profiles in your Google search results they need to have a good amount of content related to you but most users also want to limit their privacy. Some websites will try to incentivize you with free gifts to give them even more information, but do not fall for their tricks. More often than not things that appear to be free online usually end up costing you.

A good compromise is to put up "fluff content" that is loosely about you and your interests, but contains very little info specific to your personal, private life. Writing about hobbies, interests, or generic professional info works well just remember- don't put it online if you don't want the whole world to see it. Even with privacy settings on information has a way of spreading around. As a safe bet, don't put addresses, phone numbers, emails, or your zip code on public pages if you can avoid it.

2. Do a Safety Check BEFORE You Pay

There are always a few things a savvy online shopper will check before entering sensitive personal financial data onto a website. One of the most important things you can do is to check if the site is secure.

In order to do this simply look at the top of your screen where the web address is displayed, and check for https:// in the web address the "s" after the "http" means that the site is secure. Having a secure site means that the data sent between you and the given website is being encrypted, or scrambled, so online thieves will not be able to steal your information.

You should also check for a padlock displayed at the bottom of your web browser screen. When the padlock is closed, you are at a secure site. If that padlock is open on any page where you are asked to give sensitive information, you should assume that the site is not secure, and we would recommend not doing business with that entity.

3. Have Dedicated Online Payment Methods

In the unfortunate event that some of your financial data is stolen, you will be much better off if all your money is not in one place. We suggest having a credit card that is dedicated to your online shopping needs. Having a dedicated online card makes it much easier to track and dispute any unauthorized transactions.

Another very popular alternative is to use an online payment service such as PayPal or Checkout by Amazon. These services can eliminate a great deal of risk when it comes to paying online. All of these services are armed with the latest anti-fraud technology to keep purchases safe. The only true downside to these online payment services is that there are still a few web vendors out there that will not accept them as payment.

4. Get off the pesky people search databases

This may be the most important tip we have to offer in this article- get off the people search databases! Sites like Intelius, Spokeo, and Pipl scour the internet for public documents and other information that is legally available in local communities about you, your home value, your income, even your shopping habits and political views. In fact, these sites may even have a satellite photo of your home online. The people databases will then sell this personal information to marketing agencies who will in turn deliver more targeted adds to consumers and try to make a buck off you.

So where does this information come from? Surprisingly, often not from the internet although social networks and online shopping services do scrape some of your information. No, most of this information comes from your local brick-and-mortar public records office. Signing up for a credit card, buying a car, or even paying a bill could mean your information will end up being shared in an online database. There are a good number of somewhat shady online databases that are able to extract money out of every last piece of information they find.

The solution? most of these databases legally are required to remove your records from their database if you send them a formal request to remove your information. Each people search database is slightly different- some require you to send or fax a letter, some require a simple phone call, and Intelius even requires you fax them a photo of your driver's license to prove you're you. This may seem counterintuitive - faxing an information company a private personal document to remove your other info, but it is in fact totally safe and only used as a method of verification.

The only problem with this is that every 6 months you will have to re-submit your request to delete the info because new instances of your information will be found and added to the databases. It can be extremely tedious, but the only real option to fully remove the information is to contact databases you appear in one by one until they remove your records, and there are hundreds of such sites out there.

If that doesn't work, there's always one last option we recommend...

5. Feed Google!

If people search databases are making you lose sleep at night, we believe the best thing you can do is develop a strong web presence by feeding Google with safe, relevant information. This should be information that properly represents you to the world, and is content you are comfortable sharing.

As we just mentioned, you could hours and days trying to track down and eliminate your personal information from all the online databases, and even then it can spring back up as the people search sites find new info. The most surefire way to make sure people do not find this data is to bury it far back in your search results by using reputation management tactics.

Remember that people usually look no more than 2 pages in a search engine's results page. This means if you can fill up those first two pages with links to sites are full of positive information about yourself, no one will see your personal information! The good news in this arena is these people search databases often aren't very SEO optimized so they are often easy to bump off those first few pages with our methods.

Holiday Social Media Tips for Baby Boomers

With the holiday season upon us, more and more people are looking for ways to connect with loved ones and old friends if they can't be with them in person. Social media sites like Facebook have seen an influx of baby boomers in recent years and with the holiday season here, more and more of us are looking for ways to connect with loved ones and old friends if we can't be with them in person.

While it's wonderful to use social media to make connections, it can have a downside. Here are some holiday social media tips to keep you relatively safe:

1) Do not make public announcements about where you're going. No one needs to know you're leaving your home to go away to visit your children in another state. As a matter of fact, no one ever needs to know when you leave your home because that means it could be unattended and an open invitation to thieves.

2) Don't tell people where you are. On Twitter, people are known to post where they are while they're there. Once again, that's an open invitation to burglars.

3) Don't announce your shopping expenditures. Why brag that you've spent several hundred dollars on Christmas gifts this year? That's a signal that you HAVE money and could become a target for a robbery---or something far worse.

4) Advise your children and grandchildren not to go public with your travel plans. While the family may be excited that you're coming to visit, it isn't necessary to put the information on their Facebook page or "tweet" about it. You don't know who they're connected to that might be interested in such information.

5) Finally, don't click on links from people you don't know. People may try to send you a holiday greeting in disguise---which could actually contain a nasty virus. You may be connected to the friend of a friend of a friend but if you don't know they personally, don't click on the link. Instead, just go their page and post a personal greeting and thank them for thinking of you. If they didn't post the link, you'll be doing them a huge favor.

By following these tips, baby boomers, their families and friends can enjoy the holidays and stay safe at the same time.

Could a VPN Be Penetrated?

VPN services use sophisticated technology to provide anonymity and data security for users. They enable users in foreign nations to access content that may be restricted. They also enable secure communication across the Internet by including information as it is exchanged. These services are some of the most useful for businesses and for individuals who have a need for more advanced security than what can be provided by free products. Whenever a discussion about security software and hardware takes place, the question of whether or not the security of those products could be defeated comes up.

Are VPN Services Secure?

The level of security available on the commercial VPN services is really quite high. In fact, it wasn't until the advent of the personal computer that the level of security commonly available to consumers was even a realistic option. The encryption used on VPN servers can be sophisticated enough that, if you were to try to penetrate it randomly, it would take more than the combined processing power of all the computers in existence longer than the total age of the universe to actually guess at the key used to secure the data. For all practical purposes, people are not going to get through the encryption used to protect your data.

The anonymity features on VPN networks are provided by using a different server's IP address in place of your own. Between the encrypted communications and the fact that the IP address may be hidden by layers of false IP addresses, it's unlikely that anybody is going to track where you are actually coming from when you use a VPN service. Again, the overall security of these commercial products is very good in this regard. For the vast majority of users and the vast majority of purposes, you should be able to rely completely upon the security provided to you by a commercial VPN service. There are free versions of anonymous and VPN servers out there. These, of course, are not quite so trustworthy because nobody is directly accountable for them functioning properly.

Compromising a VPN?

The question remains: could a VPN be penetrated? Of course, the answer is yes. If the National Security Administration or another huge and well-funded intelligence agency really wanted to get through a VPN badly enough, they probably could. This rather strays into the realm of the silly, however. Any security can be penetrated given the right resources, a creative and intelligent group of individuals working on the problem and the right levels of technology.

For the vast majority of business users and certainly for personal users, VPN security is more than adequate. In fact, it's really quite amazing how secure these services are. If you are using a commercial VPN service, there's really no reason to worry about accessing private networks over the Internet, visiting websites or doing any other activities that require anonymity and encryption. Simply because of the rules of probability, nothing is 100 percent secure. Modern VPN technology, however, comes very close and is certainly not vulnerable to the average, or even very advanced, hacker.

How To Find Suitable Online Backup Services For Confidential Data

In case your home or office computer harbors plenty of confidential business data, you should subscribe for the best online backup service in order to save necessary files and to gain instant access to the main database. When you have an automatic backup ready for your pre-existing data, you need not worry about data crashes, loss or theft. It's interesting to note that not all online backup services are of same type. Some are free of cost while a selected few providers charge monthly fees or ask you to par on the basis of storage space.

Searching For Backup Services:

If you're looking for a suitable backup service, you need to search through the market in order to select a suitable storage space available at low rates. There are several factors that need to be considered while comparing different services. This includes technical aspects, offered services and the prices charged on them! Firstly, browse through different online stores that offer storage services and compare the basic features of their service. Pick 4-5 companies that you find suitable and get in touch with the providers. Inquire them the status of their storage, price rates, automatic backup services and additional features, if any.

Using Backup Services:

Determine your online backup storage requirements. Don't forget to encrypt necessary files before sending them to your selected company. You should store large files in compressed folders to save space. Access the main server interface and start uploading your files online. Download the necessary software provided by your vendor (if it offers the provision of automatic backup creation). Create an account and log into it. Select copy and transfer the data from your PC. You can also set passwords for enhanced security.

There are different online backup providers to choose from. Their services may depend on numerous factors like internet connection, size of the file and business requirements etc. Sometimes, internet providers offer free of cost backup services as a part of their net plan. On the contrary, some free services or low-priced services (like DropBox) are used free backup and sharing services. They're for non-commercial use. In case you want a business oriented, expensive and highly secure service, you should check out different online backup reviews in order to find a suitable one.

Different online backup providing agencies offer you the facility of scheduling backup checks. Some agencies help you in storing files on multiple locations while others provide enhanced security features. Depending upon these features, your monthly budget and your personal budget requirements, you should select the best online backup service for your use. If you consider the tips mentioned in this article, you shall successfully accomplish this purpose.

VPN Services and Privacy

VPN services provide a way to protect your privacy. The interesting thing about how these networks work is that the privacy protection does more than you might think at first. Most people would expect privacy protection to simply obscure or mask their IP address. VPN services, in fact, do provide that form of privacy. There are other ways that this privacy affects your Internet experience, however, and some of the make VPN services more interesting.

Restrictions

There are many nations in the world and some particular locations within otherwise free nations where access to information on the Internet is severely restricted. This is usually done via sophisticated firewalls and other technologies that are used to prevent people from accessing information that is inconvenient to one interest or another. To defeat this, a VPN network is a valuable tool.

The VPN network can masquerade as a computer from anywhere. If computers from a particular nation, for example, are restricted from accessing certain websites, the VPN provides a cover, allowing them to access those websites. The VPN simply provides an IP address from a nation that is allowed to view that site and, through the technology involved in making the VPN networks function, sends that information onto the user.

Information freedom is possible with the VPN network, even in an environment where it is severely restricted technologically.

Anonymity

The anonymizing service of VPN providers is the main reason that people sign up for these services as far as privacy is concerned. These services mean that, when you visit a website address, an IP other than your own shows up as the originating address for the request to view whatever material you want to see. This means that, for example, a site that logs IP addresses and uses them to sell to marketing companies wouldn't be able to get yours. It also means that any malicious attacks launched against the IP address that you seem to come from wouldn't have any effect.

The anonymity advantages of VPN service aren't always used for simple privacy needs, however. Internet security professionals oftentimes need to obscure the address that they are working from to test their own security systems. For example, a security professional may want to try launching attacks from a particular nation or from a range of IP addresses to see how well a security system they have installed does at filtering out unwanted traffic. There are reasons people use VPN service that have nothing to do with anonymity but where the anonymizing features of the VPN service are still beneficial.

Protecting your privacy online is a major concern for anybody who uses the Internet a great deal. Using a VPN service is one way that you can keep your personal information protected. You always have to give an IP address to get access to any resource on the Internet. With a VPN service, you don't actually have to give the server that you're requesting information from your real IP address and for some people that makes all the difference in the world.