Security Mistakes and Me
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Suffice it to say that some operations require isolation behind a router or you may find yourself blacklisted as I did for a week or so while I straightening things out and apologized for a very amateur mistake.
Being the hyper vigilant security conscious but social galoot I am I decided to run down the list to see where I stand therein. Those results were surprising from the standpoint that I didn't get the stellar security warm and fuzzies I anticipated up front. I dare say that it all left me somewhat humble.
The items were:
1. Using weak passwords 2. Not using a password manager 3. Not using two factor authentication 4. Making online purchases with your credit card 5. Clicking links, opening attachments from sketchy emails 6. Treating public Wi-Fi like it's private 7. Not updating your OS
7 common security mistakes you're probably making
Matt Elliott
cnet.com
| 1. | Using weak passwords is definitely not an issue with me. I try to maintain at least a strength of 64 random characters in a stream including letters, numbers, special characters ... and I change them every 30-60 days. |
| 2. | Not using a password manager. Guilty. Somehow I think I'm sufficient to the task of managing my own passwords in a text file and this has yet to embarass me. |
| 3. | Not using two factor authentication. Guilty. Computer resources who think they need to utilize my cell phone for any reason aren't likely to remain in use for long. I resent the devil out of surrendering a cell phone number for a text back to me from some email or any other clod out there thinking they need this level of access with me. They don't. |
| 4. | Making online purchase with a credit card. I understand the inherent fraud protection aspects of using credit cards for ecommerce. I'm afraid the tokenization of epay companies hasn't really attracted me and perhaps I should reconsider ... |
| 5. | Clicking untoward links in any email or on any web page is pretty much anathema to my existence and has been for years now. |
| 6. | Treating public Wi-Fi as though it's private. Nope I don't use public Wi-Fi as a rule because I simply don't trust my fellow man that much. The differentiation in public and private networks by windoze was not my first clue in that direction either. |
| 7. | Not upgrading my OS could likewise never be a problem in a world of obsessive compulsive distro maintenance ... being a Unix head and all. I think it simply goes with the territory ! |
Out of the seven items I fail to do two of them. I'm not making any excuses, only that I feel I manage these aspects to my satisfaction. I suppose as in all things I can use a little work on the security implemention of my cyber existence. Regardless, security is important to me and should be to you as well.