Category TECHNOLOGY

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 11

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: use a VPN I’ve already posted about the importance of encryption, but that focused on your “data at rest” – your hard drives and mobile device. Today’s tip is about Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which encrypts your…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 10

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: be careful with public wifi and hotspots Of course we’re all wary of public wifi, aren’t we? We never just join a hotspot at a cafe because it happens to have the same name as the cafe, right?…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 09

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: secure your home wifi/router If you don’t have high-speed internet at home, today’s tip probably won’t be for you. Also, how do you survive? Anyway, here are some things you can do to shore up your home wifi…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 08

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: change your passwords Ideally you’ve chosen and setup a password manager. If not, this part will not be as easy … but still necessary. Changing your passwords will also be a time consuming process but one that should be…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 07

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: use a password manager For a long time, you probably heard that your password should be a mix of upper, lower, special characters, and numbers and that you needed to change it every two or three months.…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 06

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: enable multifactor authentication (MFA) or two-factor authentication (2FA) You’re already familiar with authentication, which is proving you are who you say you are. The most popular way to authenticate to a service or system online is…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 05

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: encrypt everything Encryption seems like a scary topic to a lot of people; and if you get into the weeds of the algorithms used and salts and hashes … it certainly can be. But for most people…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 04

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: backup your devices If you’ve never experienced a hard drive crash on your computer or your mobile phone completely dying and you lose everything on your device … consider yourself lucky. We put a lot of information,…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 03

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: review your computer’s privacy settings It’s no secret that companies gather information about their customers. The problem is when we don’t pay attention and let them gather everything about us and our habits. While their service…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 02

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: use anti-virus and anti-malware Adding another layer of security is installing an anti-virus AND an anti-malware program on your computer AND your phone. Macs, Windows, iPhones, Androids … all of them are potentially vulnerable. Also, no single anti-virus…

Cybersecurity Advent – Day 01

Today’s Cybersecurity tip is: update your devices The most effective way to stay safe is to run the latest patches and software updates on your computer and mobile devices. While we hear all the time about zero-day vulnerabilities, most exploits…

Cybersecurity Advent Calendar

Starting on Friday, December 1, I’m going to post a series of security tips to help people learn to keep themselves safe on their computers, on their phones, and online. While I’m using the “advent” aspect of a child’s advent…

Organic Foods Aren’t Healthier

For the record, I don’t shop for organic foods because they’re healthier. I shop for them because they’re grown and/or produced without the use of (or with severely limited use of) pesticides. According to this article in The Telegraph the…

Testing from Android

Nifty, eh. Not only did I manage to get WordPress up and running for a couple domains, I also managed to tweak it to access from the Android WordPress app. It’s been too long since I’ve messed with technical stuff;…

Password123

A security analyst working for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provided guidance back in 2003 that was used as the basis for a lot of security policies. His guidance was that passwords should be complex (special characters,…