Blog Post-Security

After having classes and our lab last week, I have really begun to think of different security issues.  The truth is, I've been lax about making up good secure passwords.  I don't use the "birthday, name, usual easy passwords", but I could make them tougher, I think.

My graduation gift from my husband is going to be a new laptop, and I’m really looking forward to it. I think that the changeover to the new laptop will be the perfect time to change all my passwords and upgrade my virus protection from “free” to “paid”.  I know “paid” isn’t necessarily better, but if I get reminders to re-purchase virus protection, I’ll be more aware of it running in the background and more apt to be aware of stuff I download and that sort of thing.  Besides, I can be “cheap” and I tend to be more aware of using something that I’ve paid for. J

I also intend to make a real effort to be sure to set up and run automatic virus scans-often, as well as perform any upgrades to all programs when those annoying little pop up windows “pop up”.  Up until now, I’ve been guilty of just clicking “ask/remind me later”.

Finally, I am going to try to keep my passwords different from each other, and change them every few months, as well as store them someplace other than on my laptop too.  I hope to take advantage of that website that will tell you how secure your password is that was posted in the content section of our course.

I have to say, it was fairly creepy to see how easy it is to get onto and mess with someone else's computer.  In the lab I was the "hacker" for that exercise.  I knew it was easy, but the thought that someone else could do that to my computer while I was working on it made me realize how much I use my computer each and every day!  If someone did gain access to my computer, and I had to shut down, I'd be lost.  It's really made me think of how vulnerable we are via our computers. 

Week 12 Assignment

Three tips/hints I learned from Daryl-Make sure to pay attention to the updates when your computer tells you there are updates available.  If you dont, you can leave your computer wide open to others to access, especially if it's a security update that needs installing. 
I have to say I was surprised when Daryl mentioned that computers are really only equiped to last for 3 or 4 years.  I've had my laptop for aboug 5-6 years.  I'm not totally comfortable with having to replace my computer that often, both for cost and for environmental reasons.
At my home, we do use an external backup, and I backup my work always, in more than one location.  I suppose the FOL locker would qualify as "off site" storage.

Three tips I practice myself for troubleshooting-One involves resetting my router whenever I have issues with my internet connection.  It's just a matter of unplugging things and replugging them in in the correct order.  Another tip is simply to reboot, or restart my computer.  Third, I find that sometimes closing the program itself and restarting helps.  A fourth tip involves turning the computer off and walking away from it for a few hours or overnight.  Sometimes the biggest "trouble" is the user. :-)

From today's class-I love the idea of resetting the text (search-cctune) and plan to do this when I get home.  When I was on my co-op, we all received new monitors one day.  I found the text really hard to read.   The technicial seemed to assume that it was simply because of my age and eyesight.  Enlarging the magnification or the monitor settings didn't help at all.  And I had been able to read the previous monitor the day before with no issues whatsoever.  This cctune would have helped. 
I really like the option of CTRL/SHIFT/DELETE to open up the temp/cookies/history files for deletion.  This is alot easier than the way I used to do it.  I plan to do this weekly. 
I think I will setup an automatic defrag and ccleaner to occur monthly, rather than trying to remember or only doing these when I have a computer issue.