When you are using the internet at home, you have to deal with a multitude of attacks that may be floating around waiting to strike. But when you have a corporate network that you maintain, you have to not only deal with the attacks that are already on the internet, but also attacks that may be created especially for you. Many black hat hackers see breaking through a corporate network as a big achievement. They know that a corporate network will have real security compared to a home user. So this means that when they are able to infiltrate past a corporate network, this will lead not only to more valuable data but also more esteem in the hacker community. To stop them, you must have not only the latest in software security, but the latest in hardware security as well.
When you have a corporate network that you have to secure, you have to make sure that your hardware firewall is one of the best in the market. A firewall becomes your mainline of defense when you are dealing with outside threats. Yes, you may have the latest in corporate security anti virus, but that is only good if the infection has already gotten past your first line of defense. You have to make sure that this doesn’t happen. So to avoid this type of intrusion from happening, make sure that your corporate firewall is top notch. A company such as Cisco will have what you need to keep your organization’s data protected from outside threats. Also, you can look into hardware that will scan the incoming emails for your organization. The email process is another way that attackers are able to get their malware on your corporate networks. So having a dedicated piece of hardware that will scan your incoming emails will help in being able to thwart the bad guys before they enter your system.
After you have the right hardware that is needed in protecting your organization, you are going to have to look at the right software solutions as well. When you are securing your computer at home, usually software is your first line of defense. But on a corporate network, it is used more as the secondary line of defense. The official back up just in case anything is able to get past your hardware protections. Also when you are looking at software solutions for a corporate network, you are not going to be able to use just the normal anti virus software. You are going to have to go with the enterprise edition since it is going to have to protect so many people. All of the top vendors have a enterprise version of their software that you can take advantage of.
But anti virus is not the only software that you are going to need when you are protecting your network. You are going to need some sort of enterprise anti spyware solution as well. While spyware can be just a nuisance on a home computer, on a corporate network it can give away lots of insider secrets. This is why you need to make sure that your network is protected from the tracking software that goes along with spyware.
To stop black hat hackers on a corporate network, you will need these tools to get the job done. As long as you make sure that everything is up to date and you should be fine.
If you are a person that surfs the internet a lot, you are bound to run into web sites that can be considered sketchy at best. When a person encounters one of these sites, instead of being on alert as they should, they go to the normal human instinct which is to be curious. Unless you are a really pessimistic person, then you probably have faith in most people. Unfortunately when it comes to the internet, that faith in people can cause you and your computer to be vulnerable. If you visit a web site and you feel that something is wrong, then you should really trust your instincts. In this article we will show you what to look for when you detect a web site is up to no good. We will walk you through the many signs that will let you know if you can trust the web site or not. Some of these signs may seem basic to the advanced user but to the newer people that are on the internet, they can be a life saver.
The first thing that you want to look out for when you a visit a site that you suspect may be a phising site is the domain name. Yes this seems simple enough but you would be surprised by the many phising sites that are using a domain name that look nothing like the web site that they are trying to spoof. People just remember what a site looks like and if it matches, they think that they are there. They have no idea that a web sites design can be faked pretty easily. So if you are a person that does not understand how the pinning’s of the internet works, then you should learn how to spot if you are on the right domain name or not. It is as simple as looking at the address bar but you must also be sure that the domain name is spelled right. If the spelling is even a little bit off then that means that you are on the wrong web site.
The next thing that you should look out for is if the site is secured or not. What we mean by that is that there should be a little yellow lock at the bottom of your browser. This means that the web site is operating under the SSL security protocol. This is especially important if you are putting any kind of personal information, such as your credit card or social security number in the web site. If the site does not have that lock, then you should be very suspicious. The SSL certificate can be faked but most of the time people who create a phising site would not go through all of that trouble. So if the site does not have a lock when they are asking you to place your personal information in it, then it should be avoided at all cost.
Spotting a phising site can be very tricky if they are made especially well. Fortunately for you, most are not. If you run into the average phising site then there will be signs of it being a phony right away.
The biggest security threat that we have in 2010 is the threat of botnets forming and becoming too powerful. Everyone who has hosted a web site that was the victim of a DDOS attack has most likely seen the damage that a botnet can do. Even some of the bigger sites are falling victim to the ever increasing powers of a botnet. They have grown bigger over the years and this is a real problem. At one point, they were mainly used for a DDOS attack; but now they are now being used for sending spam and delivering viruses and other malware across the internet. If you own Windows 7, you are already half way there from keeping your computer from becoming infected. But even though the security protection in Windows 7 is good, there are several things that you must do to make it even better.
I guess that we should explain what a botnet is before we go any further. It will be hard to explain to you on how to defend yourself from something that you don’t even know what it is. So in short, a botnet is a bunch of computers that a remote black hat hacker has taken control over. After they have taken control over the computers, they are now known as zombie computers. The owners of them may not even know that anything has happened to them. Most botnet owners these days like to keep their ownership of the computer quiet. If the owner of the computer knows that they are on there, they will try to get it fix and erase the program that is controlling the computer. So the botnet owners only take control of the computer when they need it. This means that if they have something that needs to be distributed to a large amount of people, or an attack needs to happen, they turn on the zombie network and then let it go to work. They also rent out the botnet to other interested parties so that they can do their dirty work for them as well.
To keep your computer safe from becoming part of a botnet, you need to make sure that it is safe from infections. Most systems are turned into a zombie from a Trojan that was able to access your computer without you realizing it. You can stop this by making sure that your antivirus is up to date and that you run a scan over your computers hard drive frequently. Stopping these little pieces of malware will help keep your computer out of larger trouble.
Windows 7 is well equipped from protecting itself from infection. But the use of a good antivirus and common sense can go a long way in keeping your computer even safer.