Know Who You Are Talking To

It's easy to lie about who you are on social virtual networks.  Whether it's a small omission on a profile or something more nefarious, there is no question that people are generally free to create whatever identity they want online.  That freedom occasionally leads to extreme cases of complete identity manipulaltion.

There are many serial predators online with fake identities  waiting to victimize you.  It's up to you to do the digging to know who is on the other end of the screen.  Are they the real thing or something else?  How can you trust that they are who they say they are?  Do you take the same precautions on the Web that you tell your children to take?

Next post we will talk about what you can do to protect yourself.

Social Media

Social media sties are a great way to interact with other users over the internet.  Unfortunately, a large number of social media users don't understand the importance of limiting what's posted on these sites.  Attackers regularly use social media sites as reconnaissance tools,  It's no longer surprising to hear about people falling victim to identity theft or networks being infiltrated because of information gathered from social media sites.

What can you do?

• Assume that anything you post online is public and permanent.
• Don't post information that may damage you or your company's reputation.
• Be cautious of what you post because any information can be used to carry out additional attacks
• Go through all your privacy settings and restrict who is able to view your profiles.
• Connect with people you know.

Add On to Prior Pot

Recognizing phishing attempts:

Check that the e-mail message is well composed with the grammar and spelling you would expect from the sender, whether it's your boss, your brother or your bank.

Does the e-mail ask you for personal information?  Most organizations would never ask for personal information in an e-mail or ask you to "reconfirm" your password and account information.

Trust your gut!  If something doesn't seem right, it probably isn't.  If you are not sure and are worried that there is something urgent that needs your attention, then contact that company/organization as you normally would.  Never use the e-mail links or any information from a suspected phishing e-mail (including the phone number!). 

Understand that e-mail phishing works on unsuspecting people every day.  Even e-mails that seem farfetched ("Send me $100,000 so I can give you my inheritance") work all the time, but those aren't the only e-mails that get sent.  There are often crafty and well-constructed e-mails that require a close look to notice they are malicious.  So take that second lok and check before you click, download, or enter your information.

Phishing E-mails

So what can you do to prevent malicious viruses via e-mails?  First look at the "from" address.  Be sure you recognize it.  Than take a second look at the domain name (that's the name after the "@" symbol).  Make sure it's spelled correctly.  At the office, an internal e-mail from your coworker would display only his or her name.  If it also shows the full e-mail address, it came from the outside.

Look for a "reply" address that matches the "from" address.

More soon..........

Spam & Junk

Understand that "spam" and "junk" filters do not catch all malicious e-mails.  Second, know what signs to look for in a phishing e-mail.  The vast majority of phishing attempts are fairly easy to recognize and avoid.  My next blog will give some aspects of phishing e-mails that can help you recognize their true nature.

Tired of Cybersecurity Yet?

Phishing is one of the most commonly used attacks against users.  By way of e-mail, those with malicious intent will contact unsuspecting persons, asking them to click a link or download a file.  Generally, the end goal is to infect the user's computer with malware or get them to submit important personal information.  Next blog will deal with what you can do to avoid malicious attempts. 

Passwords

Never write down your password, and never store it in your browser.  If you have many user names and passwords (as we all do), it's impossible to remember them all.  Some form of storage is needed.  Utilize a password manager application.  A password manager automates the random generation of all passwords for each of your accounts, allowing you to remember only one strong passphrase (see prior blog posting.)  Password managers have strong encryption and can pseudo-randomly generate strong passwords for each unique account you log in to.

Here is a non-extensive list of password managers, as of September 10, 2015, from Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_password_managers

Even More Security

I know these postings are lacking variety but security of your electronic devices is important enought to warrant the attention.

Major software vendors that we are alll familiar with operate their own websites to distribute or sell their own software.  Use a major vendor's site to download their software, (e.g., Microsoft, Apple, Google). 

Even open-source projects typically have their own websites where you can safely download the software.  First search for favorable references to the project or developers from sources like industry news and review sites or software publishers you've worked with in the past. 

More to come......

And Still More Cyber Security

Download software only from reputable websites.  Software downloads are a great way to disguise malware.  There are numberous sites that serve as repositories for independent developers and/or open-source softwarek, which makes validating the source of the software and the download difficult.  Without knowing where the software or download originated, you could expose yourself to some very harmful software. 

Next:  What can you do?

Still More Cyber Security

Which antivirus software should you use?  Want to know who the best is?                                      Visit http://www.av-comparatives.org.  They run many different types of tests against various AV vendors' software and on different types of platforms.  Check it our and see what would work for you!

More on Cyber Security

One of the top methods of computer attacks comes from malicious software (malware), to the extent that there are tens of millions of new pieces of malware each year.  Malware can be transmiotted to a computer from file downloands, e-mail attachments, USB thump drives, and other removable media.  To make matters worse, malware is often disguised as something safe or even helpful like antivirus software.

More on this in a couple of days......

More on Passwords

OK, so how do you build a strong password? 

Start with a normal phrase that means something to only you so yu can remember it.  Do not use common quotes from books or other cultural artifacts.  Write it down, including spaces.

For example, if the phrase you use is:

Super best phrase of pass that only I can remember

Add capitalization in odd places

SupEr best pHrase of paSs that Only I caN remember

Add numbers

SupEr7best90 pH32rase of paSs th00at Only I c4aN rem9ember

Add special characters (!#$)(*&%<>?":{}][,./;@).

SupE$r7best90 pH32&rase" of paSs: th00at 0,nly I c4aN re;m9ember

That looks too hard for me to remember so I'll simply

SupE$r best90 paSs:

I'll type it into a window that will not save my work but will allow me to read what I have typed a few times to engage muscle memory.

SupE$rtest90paSs:

After typing it a few times, I have an idea of how I usually mess up typing the passphrase, which I use as part of my memory of how to type out the passphrase.  Destroy the written copy of this password-generation process that we started with.  Now you have a strong passphrase that you can remember. 

More Cyber Security

Here's some thought on what you can do to make sure your passwords are strong.  Avoid the following:

•  using your user name
•  using the same passoword with just a different digit
•  using other easily guessable aspects to your password.

Instead, use a passphrase.  A passphrase is a sentecy that you can early remember.  The longer your passphrase, the stronger it is.  Making your passphrase strong can limit the success of humans and/or computers in guessing your passphrase.  Using only simple sentences is becoming less effective with the decreasing cost of consumer graphic cards, which allow approxminate 8,810,000 encrypted password hashes (how domain user's passwords are stored in Active Directory) to be attempted each second!   

Cybersecurity

October is national cybersecurity awareness month.  Accordingly, here is a tip for securing your electronic data.

Use strong passwords.  Passwords are naturally subject to many different attacks.  Shared password conventions can increase the likelihood of passwords being guessed.  Shorter passwords of dictionary words with few or predictable numbers (e.g., the year) and not using all types of complexity are easily cracked with freely available tools and inexpensive graphic cards.

More in next blog posting...................

Interest Rates

Probably everyone is aware the Federal Reserve Bank did not move to increase interest rates at its recent meeting.  It is still speculated that we will see a quarter point increase in either October or December.  The big concern now is global economic colatility. 

Ironman

Another Madison Ironman in the books!  Awesosme weather for it yesterday.  It still amazes me the committment the athletes make to do the 2.4 mile swim; 112 mile bike ride; 26.2 mile run!  Congrats to all who participated even if they were unable to finish. 

Cowboy Stadium

I was fortunate to be in Texas for the UW/Alabama game Saturday night.  Alabama is a very good football team.  A match up with Ohio State would be a classic!  And I cannot really define how big that Cowboy Stadium is.  They certainly do things big in Texas!

Wild Ride

It appears that stockholders did not panic during the wild ride the stock market has been on.  The China economic situation certainly points out how we have become a global economy, although the U.S. economy still is the prime mover of global markets.  And the recent correction was long overdue. 

Economy

Don't panic!  In fact, if you have some excess cash, it might be a good time to invest in the market.  You would be buying good companies cheaper than several weeks ago!

Interest Rates

If you believe what you read, it appears the Fed is hell bent on increase rates a bit by year end.  For those on fixed incomes and depending on income from fixed income type securities, this would be good news.  For borrowers, should not make a great difference.