Using Common Sense to Secure your Information

Every day technology helps create efficiency for millions of people. With all of the benefits that technology provides there are also many pitfalls that come with convenience.



Online vendors make it easy for people to purchase goods at reasonable prices when compared to brick and mortar stores. There are many good companies to do business with but there are also a lot of shady vendors run by people trying to make easy money. There are some pretty easy ways to spot these characters.



First off just by viewing a site that looks poorly designed can be a sign of a site that was put together with haste just to be taken back down shortly after a few people are ripped off. Searching for reviews of the company that people have expressed there opinions of the company similar to what eBay has in the form of feedback may help you decide. Also companies that are serious about business will no doubt have thoroughly thought about security.



Do not use sites from SPAM or other illegitimate sources. Phishing sites are a sure fire way to have your identity stolen and you don't want that to happen. Make sure the site uses an SSL certificate in order to encrypt your information, this is a must have. Do not use the same password for your various logins at different sites. Use at least 8 characters if not more and make sure to include some random characters which make cracking a password much more difficult. Know that there are sites that you may login to that may not use SSL certificates so your password may be picked up using a traffic sniffer. Also wireless networks are an easy way to lose information. Be weary of people listening on the wire with traffic sniffers. So do not send important information via email and instant messenger since they are almost always sent in clear text. I have tested this numerous times and you wouldn't believe the information that is sent in plain text. Finally make sure to review you credit at least once a year, you may not even know that you a victim of online or identity theft until it’s already happened.



There are a number of resources online to help you from online fraud. A simple Google search can help you find these resources.

Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 - Initial Review

I recently got my hands on a copy of Microsoft’s latest offering in the form of desktop software, Vista and Office 2007. I have also acquired some new 64 bit Core 2 Duo Dell computers in order to test the new software for deployment though I have also been testing the new offerings on older hardware in order to determine which machines will need to be depreciated in the next year or two.



First I went ahead installed Office 2007 on my Windows XP desktop. As with most Office installs I was able to customize an install file so that I can skip on the license agreements, serial number and all of the other annoying stuff. I’m pretty impressed overall with the office install. The look of Office has been improved to use a ‘ribbon’ interface which is to improve productivity. Many users have already had issues using the “Office Button” which incorporates many of the functions that “file” button previously did. This is a common hang up with major releases from a software vendor; end-users will have to take time to become acclimated with the new functions. A trick feature I just picked up on recently was just hitting the “alt” key will highlight the shortcut’s to all of the current functions on the “ribbon” toolbar.



Vista was next on the list for testing. From the start I figured the install would be large since we had to rip the ISO image to a DVD. We started off with a 1.8 AMD with 512 MB of system memory. I knew running a video card with 64 MB of memory would limit the operating systems’ capability graphics wise but I needed a real world baseline in which Vista could run without aggrevating end-users with slowly responding applications. The install was very simple although I did provide a answer file so I wouldn’t have to bother with serial numbers and whatnot. Once Vista was up and running I was happy with the performance overall for the base install. Next I added a beta version of McAfee antivirus for Vista, Office 2007, and some statistical software such as SAS, Gams, Guass, and Limdep. The machine did slowdown somewhat mainly due to background services and the lack of memory didn’t help things much but this did give me a baseline for which machines would be able to handle Vista performance wise.



Next was the 64 bit Vista install on 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo chips, 1 gigabyte of memory, and 512 MB of video memory. These machines are amazing, Vista of course allows for the full blown user interface including Aero which provides for some pretty cool eye candy. I was able to load this machine down and it wasn’t phased at all. For a $1000 dollars (not including monitor) these machines are going to be the way to go for user’s that want the full Vista experience.



The final test to make Vista useable was to add it to the domain. I was able to add the machines to the domain without a hiccup. Setting up Outlook with the Exchange server was even easier since it picked up the domain credentials from the currently logged in user. That is where the fun ended. Vista employs User Access Controls (UAC) so the domain policy’s made software installation rather annoying at least. The lab computers were even worse because we log users in as guests so profiles are not stored eating up drive space. Vista applies the group policies to all accounts, even accounts that are not on the domain so the only fix was to move a computer out of the organizational unit (OU) before installing software so the restrictions aren’t there and then moving it back in when done.



In summary I am impressed with Vista (with the right hardware) but have a lot of tooling to do in order to find all of the benefits. I figure a desktop computer with a 2 GHz processor, 512 Mb system memory, and 128 Mb video memory should be the baseline for us.