Internet Security

Recently I have experienced something from the review on a post on Internet Security from My E-Commerce blog, http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Internet%20Security . In this blog entry, I am going to share with you guys on what I have experienced.

In the rapid growth of internet service today, the internets have become an indispensable tool for major humanity over the world. Highly demand and highly dependent on the internet service lead the world to walk into a cyber virtual world. Interaction among people no longer takes time from travelling 1 place to another but all happen instantaneously by online tools like skype, MSN messenger, e-mail, or video conferencing.

The convenient of the internet also lead to unexpected risk exposure, such as: virus, malware, adware, spamming, cracking and many else. While a person is likely to depend on internet in his life, many of his information will expose to internet like personal id and bank account. If the internet is being hacked or threat by malware, all the information of the person will lose and the most important is the information of he or she may be abused by the hacker or cracker.

For the internet, it is never have a well secured of protecting code. The code is created by humanity intelligence and programming skill, the other person who has the same programming skill and the intelligence may crack the codes too. Thus, for every of the internet users today, please be aware of the internet security, do not simply put any privacy information into the internet, it is not always safe. This are the advice from me, always make a backup of your information whichever in digital form into hard copy.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data ?

Every item that we purchased, every password that we typed, every online bill and even every website we have ever visited are permanently stored on hidden files in our computer which can easily be recovered by hackers and ID thieves with easy to get software found on the internet. Identity thieves are smart, they will steal your personal information and your identity and it is easier than stealing our wallet. Although some hackers get their thrills from breaking into and vadalising our property but most hackers are thieves.

In order to safeguard our information we should:

1. block hackers from gaining access to our computer

2. make our computer invisible to everyone on the internet

3. automatically stop pop-up ads

4. protect data by using backups

5. protect from identity theft and online profiling

6. eliminate spam and prevent spyware sending personal information across the internet.

For those who will be lost without computers or even access to the internet, we should really take this into consideration. Quite simply, the internet has become a way of life for many of us. We use it daily for e-mail, shopping, banking, working, chatting or even surfing. Over the past years, the itnernet has become a virtual breeding ground for hackers, viruses, SPAM, spyware, pop-ups and identity thieves. One of the solution is to have a good password on your email. Any activities done through the internet there is always a risk invovled. Here are some of the risk that is extremely dangerous:

1. the safety of your family

2. safety of your investments.

3. the cash in your bank accounts

4. sensitive health information.

5 credit card numbers

6. ATM pins

7. personal information.

There are always ways to battle this hackers from getting our information. There are several methods that may be used:

1. ANTI VIRUS PROTECTION

arm ourself with most powerful tool-knowledge and build a barrier to protect ourself from viruses that can destroy our personal information and keep ourself safe from passing those viruses on to others.

2. ANTI-SPYWARE PROTECTION

Keep hackers from using their technical spyware to locate our personal information. DOn't let them follow us around to our favourite websites. This makes sure that no one is detecting your every key stroke.

3.CHILD PROTECTION

If there is a child that uses our computer, this function will protect htem from accidentally clicking pop-ups and accepting e-mails that may potentially be an identity theft nightmare.

4. HACKER-PROOFING

lock down our virtual internet files, passwords and bank information from hackers. This function or software makes our information virtually invisible on the itnernet.

5.FILE PROTECTION.
We must set our important folders safeguarded with passwords such as passwords, credit car information, purchased items on store websites.

Threat of online security: How safe is our data?

Nowadays, computer is the basis equipment at home and office in this world. People use the computer online to do their business or communicate with their customer. Unfortunately, the threat of online security always happen to us. Computer virus is a common threat on computer.

Do u know what is computer virus? Let me explain to you, a computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. The term "virus" is also commonly used, albeit erroneously, to refer to many different types of malware and adware programs. The original virus may modify the copies, or the copies may modify themselves, as occur in a metamorphic virus. A virus can only spread from one computer to another when its host is taken to the uninfected computer, for instance by a user sending it over a network or the Internet, or by carrying it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, or USB drive. Meanwhile viruses can spread to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer. Viruses are sometimes confused with computer worms and Trojan horses. A worm can spread itself to other computers without the need to be transferred as part of a host, and a Trojan horse is a file that appears harmless. Worms and Trojans may cause harm to a computer system's hosted data, functional performance, or networking throughput, when executed. In general, a worm does not actually harm either the system's hardware or software, while at least in theory; a Trojan's payload may be capable of almost any type of harm if executed. Some can't be seen when the program is not running, but as soon as the infected code is run, the Trojan horse kicks in. That is why it is so hard for people to find viruses and other malware themselves.

It is very important for you to protect your data, what can you do? Well, you can do the following:
1) Protect your personal information. It is valuable.
2) Know who you are dealing with online.
3) Use anti-virus software, a fire-wall, and anti-spy ware software to help keep your data.
4) Be sure to set up your operating system and web browser software property and update them regularly.
5) Use strong passwords or strong authentication technology to help you to protect your personal information.
6) Back up important files.
7) Lean what to do if something goes wrong.
8) Protect your children online.
Please remember these; they can help you to protect your computer data.

Phshing: Examples and its prevention methods

Phishing
Phishing is a form of identity theft that uses the Internet to fraudulently acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, credit card details and bank account numbers from business and individuals. It is the act of sending the user an email and directing the user to enter personal details at a very real looking website. The purpose is to steal the user’s information.

Examples.

Example 1

"Update Your Account"a simple eBay phishing attempt:

As the website is made similar to a legitimate organizations site, the people are easily being tricked into thinking that they were actually being contacted by eBay and were subsequently going to eBay’s site to update their account information.

Example 2

The technique of URL spoofing was used in this example. The users will be tricked into thinking that they are on a legitimate website as a malformed URL will not be displayed properly be certain web browsers.



Prevention methods
Using TippingPoint’s Phising Protection can prevent Phishing. It is able detect and prevent phishing attempts by analyzing the content of both the web site and e-mail and look for defining phishing characteristics, certain vulnerabilities and behaviors. It is done by a combination of vulnerability filters, signatures and behavior-based protection techniques. With phishing protection, the TippingPoint IPS identifies phishing e-mail scams to protect the individuals and businesses from financial losses and unauthorized phishing operations within their web servers.

Phishing can also be prevented with the installation of Cyberoam. It can help to prevent phishing by blocking site access and spam entry. The filtering and firewall of Cyberoam prevent inbound and outbound traffic to sites and others that are spyware carriers, which can be a forerunner to phishing attacks. Besides, most of the phishing mail by spam filtering will be stopped before it reaches the users with the help of Cyberoam’s pre-integrated Anti-Spam as it will analyze the mail content and delete phishing mails.

Besides, Firefox can be installed to protect the user’s websites from being phishing. Firefox will check the sites that the users browse against a list of known phishing sites for more up-to-date protection as phishing attacks occur very quickly. The Firefox’s security settings can configure the phishing protections settings and enhance the capability.

In addition, enterprise must also educate their employees of phishing threats to prevent them from creating a backdoor entry for the phishing into the network as spyware and phishing attacks can be entered though other means rather than the Internet.