Lately, I have been concerned with the security of the data on my computer and how I could improve upon that security. My concern is someone illegally breaking into my computer and gaining access to my data, passwords, social security number, credit card account numbers and my bank account numbers. Any computer with a broadband connection to the Internet is susceptible to an attack. Preventing unauthorized access to the important data on my computer is my sole responsibility. Data security involves recognizing and responding to any potential security threats in advance.
I am not a computer security export. I am basing my security advice on the 18 years of computer experience I have, most of which is on Apple Computers. Therefore, my advice is primarily targeting Mac OS X users. Securing computers running Mac OS X involves taking a few steps. Computers connected via a full-time broadband connection are much more vulnerable to an attack than computers that are connected to the internet via a dial up connection.
You can perform many relative simple procedures to protect your computer from illegal access. First disable any Sharing Services that you are not using. If you are not sharing files over your LAN then there is no need for you to have Personal File Sharing enabled and this goes for Windows Sharing, Personal Web Sharing, Remote Login, FTP Access and Printer Sharing. If you do need any of the above services enabled then be sure to also enable the built in Firewall for that service.
For additional protection against intruders I chose to use a Linksys Firewall cable/DSL router. The Linksys Router comes with built-in advanced Firewall and VPN capability allowing you to connect multiple PC's to a high-speed broadband Internet connection or to an Ethernet backbone. This router also acts as the only externally recognized Internet gateway/IP on your local area network (LAN) making it extremely difficult for an intruder to obtain a local IP address supplied by the built in DHCP server of the Linksys router.
It is critical for a safe computing environment to supplement your physical security with a few simple virtual ones. One of the simplest and most important is careful management of your account passwords. Most email accounts and many web sites require you to use an account name and password to login. If you use the internet a lot you are going to accumulate quite a few passwords. Managing these passwords to keep them secure is one of the most important area's of online safety.
Most people underestimate the importance of choosing good secure passwords and keeping those passwords secret. A good password has two properties: It should be hard to guess, easy for you to remember and as lengthy as possible.
When trying to create a secure password thats hard to guess, keep several things in mind. Never use information about yourself that someone could guess or figure out by doing a little research about you. It is also important not to use the same account name and password for multiple sites. If a criminal gets the information for one site he will have access to all your accounts using that information.
I use a program called Wallet developed by Waterfall Software to store ALL my password and login information. Wallet uses military-strength 448-bit Blowfish encryption to secure your most important data. Wallet also comes with a Password Generator to aid the user in creating very secure passwords. I feel very comfortable storing all my important data in Wallet. Another application that lets you manage your passwords and securely store notes, account numbers, and other confidential information is Apple's Keychain Access. By default when you login to Mac OS X you are automatically unlocking the user's login keychain. I do not like to store important information in the login keychain because the login keychain remains unlocked while you are logged into Mac OS X by default. If you leave your computer and forget to logout or lock the login keychain anyone could sit down at your computer and access your passwords and login names. I recommend creating another keychain to store your important information in and open that keychain only when access to that information is needed and then promptly locking it after access.
Not all applications allow you to securely protect the application data it creates. In these cases I will store that data on an encrypted disk image that I create using Apple's Disk Utility.
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