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.