In addition to purchasing antivirus and anti-piracy protection software, there are a number of additional strategies that you can employ on your computer and while operating your computer to help protect against intrusion and protect your information wherever you choose to let it reside. Here is a list of some tips to help you.

• Turn off or log off your computer when you are not using it; the less time your computer is online, the less it will be seen by outsiders who could do you harm.

• If you have more than one person in your household using your computer, set up separate accounts with “firewalls” for each of them; do not allow people to enter your system through their own username and password.

• Keep your antivirus software as up-to-date as possible. Update it regularly so that you are protected against the newest viruses that have been identified and that your antivirus software vendor has protected.

• Increase the privacy settings on your computer. In an upcoming conference, I will show you how to update this setting if you are using Windows 10. Watch that video as well and also look to update your privacy settings in older versions of Windows if that is what you are running on your computer.

• Be careful when opening PDF files that you receive from external sources. Hackers and software virus writers have recently found this to be an effective platform to deliver their damaging payloads.

• As for emails, don’t be curious. If you don’t know where an email came from, don’t open it. If you open an email from someone you do not know and / or received in an unsolicited manner, please do not click on any links within the email. Executable viruses are sometimes attached to what you think is just a link to another site.

• If you are concerned about the authenticity of an email address when you have received an email, please check by looking at the “Details” drop-down menu, you can click next to the email name. Sometimes I’ve even gone one step further by checking your email domain address using a domain provider to do a “Who is it” search when I’m really wondering where something came from.

• Be careful with all downloads to your computer. Make sure you know that the source is safe and that you are on a real web page that belongs to that source when you download the content. Hackers are now setting up “fake” web pages that look like real businesses to lure you in and that they can access you via downloads from their sites.

• Using the “Cloud” for storage is risky, even in places like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. can be hacked. Cloud storage locations seem to be the main targets of hackers. These are convenient data storage and backup locations for many, so if you want to use them, here are some tips that could save the privacy of your content there.

o The simplest protection method is to send only encrypted or compressed content there for storage. If you are using zip files, please use the Zip password feature before sending. This helps protect your content even if that site is hacked.

o Encrypt your important files on your computer before sending them to the cloud. In fact, it is a good idea to store your important files on your computer only in encrypted formats, even when they reside on your computer. Encryption products like MEGA and SpiderOak can help you here. If you really work with sensitive content on a regular basis, you can also implement products like encFS; Installation takes a couple of hours, but you can set up folders on your computer that automatically encode all the files you move there. This folder and its subsets look and behave like normal folders on your PC, so once installed, the encryption is automatic for you.

• Use of plugins such as webcams and microphones. Configure your privacy settings to not allow applications to use them on your PC and disconnect external microphones and webcams when not in use. It’s not that difficult for an outsider to get into most systems and take control of these devices to watch or record you doing things in and around your computer.

• If you are on a Microsoft platform, consider installing their free app: “The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit.” Microsoft Quote: “Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) is a utility that helps prevent vulnerabilities in software from being successfully exploited. EMET achieves this goal through the use of security mitigation technologies. These technologies work as special protections and obstacles an exploiter must overcome. to exploit software vulnerabilities. These security mitigation technologies do not guarantee that vulnerabilities cannot be exploited. However, they work to make exploitation as difficult as possible to perform. EMET too provides a configurable SSL / TLS certificate pinning feature called Trusted Certificate. The feature is intended to detect (and stop, with EMET 5.0) man-in-the-middle attacks that take advantage of public key infrastructure (PKI ) “.

• When you’re browsing websites where you may be clicking on content and links, look for https sites where you can, but don’t just rely on the end (s) of the http URL. Click on the associated lockbox to verify the legitimacy of the security certificate details for the web page being scanned.

• Scorpion System Protection is an anti-piracy software product that you may consider purchasing. Designed to support Microsoft, NIST, DoD, and Homeland Security remote access standards, this product will help increase the security of your computer in accordance with government usage standards.

• Sandboxie is a protection application that you can purchase for both home and commercial use. It’s a good place to run new software that you’re concerned about using, and it has plenty of other great features too. Sandboxie uses isolation technology to separate programs from your underlying operating system, preventing unwanted changes from being made to your personal data, programs, and applications that are safely on your hard drive.

• When browsing the Internet, never log in from your computer while in Administrator mode on your computer. You do not want this login information to be shared in cyberspace. Only access the Internet from user accounts that you have set up on your computer.

In short, implementing some or all of these ideas on your computer and in your online life will go a long way to protecting it. That’s it for this article. Goodbye for now.