Computer and Network Security has become one of the most crucial sector nowadays with viruses, Trojans, malware, bots etc., wreaking havoc on computer systems day in and out. The most shocking thing is, even when you are fully updated with the latest security software and regularly scan your system, you are still not safe, with the new viruses hitting the web every minute. It is an ongoing battle, the only way we could remain safe is through constant vigil when using computer systems and also now the mobile phones.

And on the other hand you have website hacking, impersonation ( identity theft ), DOS ( Denial of service attacks), Phishing etc., and lots of other threats to computer networks across the world. Victims of such attacks come from a wide spectrum including popular government websites and other important public figures.

Also in the recent past there was a strong speculation of Network attacks being used as a modern form of warfare by targeting the adversary’s vital communication networks.

I will suggest using best practices in the industry to prevent any data loss on your computer system and more importantly protecting your online identity, it being so crucial nowadays, as we are now transacting more and more on the internet.

I will suggest keeping yourself updated every now and then with latest security features and scan your machine regularly.

I will suggest you to use anti-virus software’s scanning for viruses and using separate dedicated software for scanning Spy wares.

Registry checkers are very tough things to use and only users with expert knowledge can handle it, as tinkering with the registry is like playing with the soul of your machine and if anything goes wrong it’s very hard to revert back.

Never trust every other website for software’s when downloading, always buy authentic software from the original vendor, and always check the necessary credentials of a website before downloading anything like music, video or games. Many websites are attack websites and can pose a threat to your computer security.

If you are using Firefox, though it consumes little bit of more memory, but should work fine on faster machines, you have a good add-on in it like WOT. WOT (Web of Trust) is an add-on for Firefox which lets the user have knowledge of a site’s worthiness and other features with indicators of green, orange and red. So, that you don’t visit a website which might attack you by running malware’s on your machine or copying sensitive information from your computer.

If you have sufficient knowledge you can add your vote, it’s basically a user shared experience of a website, mostly it is true and sometimes it can be misleading or wrongly suggesting an authentic site to be an attack site.

Always be in touch with what processes your machine is running on your system, as there are many methods through which Trojan’s and Spyware’s get activated on your machine, they may be lying hidden in a program that you might think safe, but they get activated as soon as you run that program.

Image objects in the email many times have a malicious code embedded into it and they get activated when you open your email and click the object, the spamming follow the same procedure affecting the networks traffic besides fraudulent information solicitation emails.

Password thefts are serious, a threat to your identity being impersonated online; there are many ways that you could lose your password, by losing your physically stored details in the form of a diary or other object, by selecting easily guessable passwords in the form of names or other popular places and public figures or even your favourite dish.

There are several password breaking methods available unless you use a strong password in the form mixing upper case, lower case letters, adding some numbers and some special characters on your keyboard to it, so that it is at least eight characters strong.

Your password is an input to the encryption scheme employed by an online service and sometimes if you reverse that scheme (decryption) the password could be guessed, using strong passwords makes your password hard to break.

So, as you can see there are two elements in this security, you need to rely on your password and the encryption scheme being employed, if anything is weaker then the integrity of the information being transmitted or accessed could be compromised, mostly many popular online services like email and chat clients use latest encryption methods, but what if you have landed into an unchartered territory and are required to use a service whose encryption scheme is not as strong as it should be, your strong password could save you the day.

Mostly passwords are easiest thing that bad guys rely on breaking into someone’s online account either email, bank or any other online service.

Here’s a link for Microsoft’s password strength checker page

I will try and keep updating you on this topic from time to time. Thanks for reading, enjoy :) !