One of the most frightening things that can happen to a person is to lose the data off of their hard drive. Many of us store personal and business information on our computers. The thought of losing data due to a crashed or failed hard drive or perhaps a breach of data security sends chills down the spine of every grown man and woman. Once you except that you did not back up your data you need begin the data recovery process.

What exactly are your data recovery options once your hard drive crashes? First of all, stop using the computer immediately. It is not suggested that you run any data recovery software that came with your computer as this software can overwrite the original files. The next step is to allow a hard disk recovery company to restore your pertinent files. Contact a reputable company immediately. There are a few companies who come right to your home, but at-home data recovery computer services charge more. Certain computer files, such as DWG files (a complex graphics file format), require a specialist in order to be recovered. If there is damage to the hard drive you may not be able to recover your files. A hard drive crashing is an instance where data recovery is possible. If your data security is breached you may never recover what is stolen.

The best way to avoid compromised data security is to put safeguards in place. A few data security measures are encryption, antivirus and firewall protection. Data security such as encryption translates data into a secret code. To read an encrypted file you must have access to the key or password that enables you to decrypt it. There are many software programs and services that provide data encryption services depending on your data security needs. Additional data security measures such as antivirus and firewall protection provide further data protection. Some software programs have the ability to provide both antivirus and firewall protection for overall data security. One way to avoid the mess of data recovery is to perform regular backups. Basic computer maintenance includes full and incremental backups. It is recommended that you perform a full backup once a week. An incremental backup is a backup that backs up only the files modified since the last backup and depending on your needs you can schedule this to run every day. It’s also beneficial if you have a copy of your data offsite. When you need to access this data you can either open the offsite data program and run it, or log on via the web to access your data. You will want to check with your service provider how to perform data recovery if needed.

Data recovery either from a crashed hard drive or lost through compromised data security can be a frustrating and devastating experience. The best situation is to avoid the loss of data all together. With regular computer backups and data security measures in place your computer data will remain where it needs to be, on your hard drive and easily accessible.

Some people balk at the cost of protecting their data, as well as the time involved in doing secure backups. But what they fail to consider is the cost of their lost personal and productivity time that is spent trying to recover data that could be recovered in literally MINUTES if they had properly safe-guarded the data in the first place! If your computer data files are the lifeblood of your business and/or personal life, the time and money involved in protecting that data adequately and properly cannot be determined by a dollar value.

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What is Phishing?

With so many of us online nowadays, it’s inevitable that criminals familiar with computer technology have found ways to take advantage of it to make money. The Internet is almost impossible to police, as it crosses so many international borders, and criminals can operate basically from anywhere there’s power and an internet connection. Phishing is just one of many schemes thought up by criminal minds to part us from our money.

Phishing is simply the scam of sending out a fake email in order to try and get the recipient to respond with private or financial information. You’ve probably received plenty of these - they pretend to come from a well known bank, tell you that someone has changed your password or that your account will be terminated if you don’t confirm your details, and give you a link to click on.

Of course if you do actually click on the link, you’ll be taken to a false website where the information you enter will be recorded and used to log in to your bank account or credit card and steal your money. In extreme cases, where the phishing attempt also gets private information such as your social security number, your whole identity may be stolen and used to apply for fake loans. Your financial and credit history can be ruined in literally hours, before you have any idea there’s something wrong.

How Do I Avoid Being Caught?

While this sounds terrible, there are things you can do to lessen the risk of your information being phished. The first, and most important, is to NEVER respond to an email that appears to come from your financial institution. It doesn’t matter how legitimate it looks, or whether it has the right logos in it. These businesses are well aware of the rapid spread of phishing, and the last thing they would do is confuse things by sending an email requesting your login details or for you to confirm a password. If in doubt, call your bank by looking up the phone number - don’t use any phone numbers included in the email - and ask them if the email is legitimate. Never click on any links or URLs contained in the email, don’t reply to the email, don’t acknowledge that you’ve received it - just hit the delete button as fast as possible.

When you’re visiting websites, always be wary of supplying too much private information. Only supply such information if you’re sure it’s a legitimate site that you’ve navigated to by yourself, and there should be a locked padlock logo in the bottom of the browser so you know the site is secure. Never enter this kind of information at a website you’ve reached by clinking on an email link.

What Type of Phishing Emails Can I get?

Phishing isn’t just limited to financial institutions. Many phishing scams imitate emails from eBay and well-known stores. They may appear to be a special offer, suggesting you click on the link to get a great deal on that particular item. The problem is that you’ll end up at a website designed to steal your information, not the store’s website. If you’re especially interested in the deal being offered, call the store and ask if it’s a genuine offer before clicking on anything.

If you do receive a suspicious email that you think is a phishing scam, it’s always helpful to notify the company that it appears to come from. Some businesses have specific addresses for receiving phishing notifications, but many simply use postmaster@theirURL. PayPal can be reached via spoof@paypal.com. You can also report the scam to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, although this mainly deals with the more threatening and widespread phishing scams.

The important thing to remember is that you should never click on an email link without checking with your bank first. It doesn’t matter how dire the consequences sound if you don’t do it - that’s all part of the scam. The more vigilant we all are, the less people will fall for phishing scams, and the better the chance that one day these criminals will give up and leave our inboxes alone.

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It seems nowadays if you are not online, you don’t exist. It really does not matter what type of company you run, you should have an online presence to let your prospects and clients know about your company and services. When you decide to take the leap onto the Internet there are some precautions you should take. I have friends who say all the time, I really have nothing to hide or worry about. This may be true, but malicious users like to deface websites.Which can ruin you and your businesses reputation.

This is a paper about firewalls protecting your company from outside threats and unauthorized access.

A firewall is a great start. Firewalls can be both hardware and software based. There are many different firewall vendors some of the bigger names are Cisco, Symantec, and Checkpoint. The difficult part is configuring the firewall. This is where many intruders bypass security, because the firewall is poorly configured. I would like to mention that there are many Open Source programs and operating systems that offer great firewall software. I personally believe that OpenBSD has one of the most secure operating systems and firewall configurations if done right. FreeBSD also has firewall software, it is called IPTABLES.IPTABLES offers packet filtering, NAT and you can even change packets in Linux. I have to say you can do anything you want in Linux, because the source code is right there. It’s a beautiful thing. Linux also uses this; you can build a firewall with the old system sitting in your garage and two Linux compatible network cards.Linux can be hardened, this means to make the operating system more secure. I like the tool Bastille Linux its is developed by Jeff Beale. To really get a grasp on firewalls you need to understand TCP/IP and allot of different protocols to know if you should allow or deny them into your network. IP addresses identify hosts on the Internet they look like this 127.214.234.54. Firewalls can block IP addresses, ports, protocols and even keywords that come into packets. Hackers that want into you network have many different tools at their disposal to try to bypass firewalls. One common attack is known as Denial Of Service or DOS attacks. The attacker simply floods your network, firewalls with so many packets that it cannot handle them and sometimes crashes. Firewalls are available with DOS filtering to keep these attacks low, and start dropping packets.

Firewalls do not protect you from internal threats such as employees bringing in viruses from home. Or remote users using VPN’s (virtual Private Networks) bypassing your firewall. Think about if you bring your son to work and he downloads music on your fast company internet connection only to introduce your corporate network with a worm or even worst a Trojan horse. Service ports that are open to the public such as Port 80 HTTP, have know vulnerabilities on the Internet. FTP has many vulnerabilities as well.

Are there different types of firewalls?

Yes. There are hardware and software firewalls. You might be even using Zone Alarm or Black Ice Defender. These are software based firewalls, the more I study firewall technology I realize that everything truly is a software firewall. A computer is nothing without software to tell it what to do.

Packet Filters

Packet Filters look at source and destination addresses. This is where firewall rule sets come in to play. The firewall administrator must determine which source and destination ports and addresses to allow or deny. The security administrator needs to keep up to date with alerts on vulnerabilities as new holes are found and created daily. A technique known as spoofing can sometimes fool firewalls but making it appear that a packet is coming from inside the protected network when in fact it is an attacker changing the source address.

Application Gateways

Application Gateways are like errand boys. You request a file and the application gateway grabs it for you.This is great for logging connections, and setting up authentication as well.

Statefull Packet Inspection

Statefull Packet Inspection is a technique used by Cisco PIX firewalls and Checkpoint Firewalls these firewalls look at the data coming across the network.It can also authenticate connections, users can usually not notice that the firewall is in place. Allot of firewalls now allow you to configure VPN’s which is awesome if you have remote workers and satellite offices and need to transfer data securely.

Intrusion Detection is also something to consider, I like SNORT. SNORT can detect known attacks against your system and does a great job at logging them if set up correctly. There are thousands of different software and hardware solutions you can purchase for you home or network. I happen to like Open Source, because I like learning and knowledge and the Open Source community has taught me more than the corporate world ever will. A book I would like to recommend that is great for learning firewalls is called simply enough Building Internet Firewalls, it is by O’reilly. That is all for now. One last tip, backup, backup, backup.

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