Security on the web

--Originally published at Don't Trust Humans, Trust Computers

OOOH the internet such a beautiful and harmonic place yet so full of stranger dangers and mischievous things. People must of the time are very naive when they are on the internet. They are not well aware of the dangers that the internet has. Even though this seems like I am giving a bad reputation to the Internet, I am only saying the truth. Yes, the internet is one of the most amazing inventions there is. It has help people from all over the world communicate in a way it seems impossible before and has brought us many other wonderful things. But sometimes there are people that take advantage of this great invention and try to use it for malicious purposes. Every time we navigate in the internet we are expose to some kind of danger, but if we are smart enough we will be able to not fall into the tramps.

Here are some advices to take in consideration when we are in the internet.

Passwords
- How many of us know a person that has a very awful password, if we he/she share his/her password so freely, well… there’s a problem. When we are creating accounts to some websites and they ask us for a password, we need to create strong password. Try combining letters (both capital and lowercase), numbers and special characters. DON’T share your passwords with any one, unless you truly trust the person you are sharing it with. Don’t use the same password for different websites, try using a different one in every website.

Internet Browsers
- To be able to navigate in the internet we need a browser to do that. There are plenty of browser out there for you to choose from. When you have selected your browser, you have to make sure is up-to-date.
  
  Continue reading "Security on the web" →

You shall not pass!

--Originally published at The shield of the world

So today post is about Authentication and Access Control…which is something not so new for someone who actually respects the base configuration of Windows (Yeah…right) permissions about new software and modifications and also for the Unix base OS with sudo.

So in the more basics words Authentication is when we identify ourselves to the OS, with an username and a password. So authentication is in reality so simple, just helps the OS to verify that the individual or “user” we claim to be, is indeed ours.

Actually when you are on the same network as others computers and you want to access the information on them, you got a pop-up asking for an specific user and password. This is to authenticate that you are trying to get your own information and not someone else.

We have seen movies where the authentication is almost a ritual, first the person just stands by and uses his password of 4 digits, then in the other door he puts his fingertip, on the other one he uses his eye to authenticate himself and finally he almost have to sing or dance or pray to the gods looking for it to work and access the most secret place and treasure.

Of course in real life there is a high chance that you don´t even have the user and password authentication enable. We are lazy, yes we are… but we need to know when to block our PC and avoid those email for the entire enterprise saying “DONUTS ON ME”, no, I haven´t suffered this, but someone in my group did.

Is not entirely necessary to implement the full ritual that I just mention to you, but a 2 factor authentication can help us to avoid getting our information filtered. When you lost

Continue reading →