Part one – how to protect yourself.

Recently I have had the unenviable task of trying to reach a compromise between security and marketing in relation to emails.

It has not been an easy one as is often the case with these kinds of situations. The more secure something is, the less attractive or friendly it becomes which is not something brand/ marketing like to hear. Add to this the fact that often what brand and marketing think is great isn’t always the most accessible let alone secure, particularly when it comes to emails.

However with the increase in attacks coming via email, the need to be secure in our electronic communications is ever increasing. As these attacks increase, the need for companies to not only be secure in everything they do but to try and educate the consumer in how to be secure in the electronic age also increases.

I have often told friends and colleagues that the best way to be secure online is not necessarily by building a fortress around yourself of both hardware based and software based firewalls as well as routers and anti virus/ spyware/ malware or rootkit/ adware hunters etc, but through changing the way they behave online.

Being careful about how you click, where you click and using a bit of common sense will often go along way. However these ideals are usually restricted to the IT professional, as most internet users aren’t and won’t be savvy enough to protect themselves without a little education.

So the basic set of defences would be-

  • A router – this offers the best natural defence against attacks. Most modern routers come with in built protection but by the very nature of how a router works it will offer some protection to you.
  • Virus protection – If you aren’t going to check attachments that are sent to you before you open them then this is a must.

That is it, but where is the software firewall, you cry. Well, as I mentioned above your router will act as a natural firewall regardless of what it come with built in and most modern routers come with some security features built in so even if you don’t need to share your internet connection just yet I would recommend you pick up a good router.

If you did have a software based firewall, not only would it be taking up your computers memory and processing power, but they are only really good at defending against things that have already gotten onto your system. This will be the alerts you see about “‘such a program’ needs access to the internet”. You will keep getting these alersts, and in the beginning this should be all your normal programs as it learns what you use.

After a while of clicking these alerts you will become sick of them and then users often get click happy they forget to read them or just assume it is OK and then the firewall becomes useless.

In most cases, if this has happened and your computer has been compromised, even the best anti-virus/anti-whatever is not going to be able to clean up your PC enough to give you the peace of mind that you are no longer infected by something and often the only way to know is to back up your important data and format the machine.

So, if any of this has put the fear of God into you, at least you now know what to do. Don’t buy a load of bloated software that will just slow you down and lure you into a false sense of security giving you the warm fuzzy feeling until the next subscription bill comes in. Buy yourself a decent router and be clever about where you go and what you do while on the internet.

Common sense is king!