They are watching you ?

--Originally published at Computer Security - Arturo Mendoza

Computer Security

They are watching you ?

It's all about to protect our information and systems, Computer Security is a must part of the Computer Systems, like Computer Systems Engineers are our responsibility to promote the importance and impact of these, if all of us share a bit of it to our friends and family, we will have a better world.

Involves everyone

Computing Security involves everyone, people, government and companies, but why is so important today, because all the data that you, me and everybody generates on devices, Internet and hardware can be accessible for everyone that know how to find it. Just think about it, you check your bank accounts, you send photos, confidential information at work, your location, things that you do, and a lot of information that maybe you didn't know it. If all these information could be stolen imagine all the information that we can know about you or for a company.

The bad guys

All the information is in a computer, that means that it can be accesible. Outside are bad guys that are trying to access to bank accounts, personal information, etc. No matter if you are a famous person or a normal person, they want your information. It is our duty to protect ourselves.

Why should we study Computer Security

It's not only about hacking, it's also about a protection culture, about made life safe and better for the people. There is still a long way to go, the people think security is bored and it's difficult to implement, and they are right, today still being complicated, we need to change this, and the only way it cab be done, if you help us.

This is not the CIA you’re looking for.

--Originally published at Stories by Juan Andrés Rocha on Medium

Remember, this is a blog series about Computer Security, so in this context we’re not talking about the Central Intelligence Agency. We’re talking about the three goals of a Secure Computer System: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

These are the three maxims we need to accomplish to ensure a system is secure. So if the system you’re creating, or the one you’re paying for does not stick to these three definitions, then why are you even using it?

Pixabay on Pexels

Confidentiality /känfədenSHēˈalədē/:

Confidentiality pertains to the treatment of information that an individual has disclosed in a relationship of trust and with the expectation that it will not be divulged to others without permission in ways that are inconsistent with the understanding of the original disclosure.
- University of California, Irvine (Department of Research)

Basically, keeping confidentiality is just leting the users know what will happen to their information and, if they agree, stick to the rules and make sure all of this information is kept safe and private by all means.

Integrity /inˈteɡrədē/:

Integrity involves maintaining the consistency, accuracy, and trustworthiness of data over its entire life cycle. Data must not be changed in transit, and steps must be taken to ensure that data cannot be altered by unauthorized people (for example, in a breach of confidentiality).
- TechTarget

And, the last, but not least goal:

Availability /əˌvāləˈbilədē/:

It is important to ensure that the information concerned is readily accessible to the authorised viewer at all times. Some types of security attack attempt to deny access to the appropriate user, either for the sake of inconveniencing them, or because there is some secondary effect.
- Suprema Project

Imagine a bank app or website that wouldn’t let you check your balance whenever you wanted to, would you still use it? Why? You really don’t

Continue reading "This is not the CIA you’re looking for."

All the Wrong Questions: When did you Change your Wi-Fi Password last?

--Originally published at Stories by Juan Andrés Rocha on Medium

Pexels

A random person shows up at your place: a mailman, a milkman, an insurance salesman, a friend, a friend’s friend or a family member. You talk to them for a little while and then they ask if they can come into your home, and you show them every corner of it, including where you keep your family pictures, your IDs and where you keep the money. Do you? No, because that would compromise your security, wouldn't it? No? You really don’t care?

Well, maybe we don’t do that (very often) but we share our home network everytime a guest shows up. But, what does that have to do with compromising security? you may ask. Well, that’s another wrong question.

Most of the time, our gadgets share private information over the network, because every device connected to your home network is trustworthy, isn’t it? Look, I’m not saying you shouldn’t trust your family or friends, what I’m saying is: if you want to keep it tight, you should definitely look “Computer Security” up. A term which here means the protection of data, networks and computing power (Davis, 2015).

Sometimes, we’re just too confident with how we handle our sensitive information and home networks, and that’s why we should study Computer Security. Some ways to stay safe is to create a guest network and to change our Wi-Fi passwords regularly to avoid others from breaking in or infiltrating our networks, and get access to our files.

Also, if you’d like to know who’s connected to your Wi-Fi network, you can use this really helpful app called Fing.

Fing App Logo

Fing is a network scanner to detect intruders, and solve network issues easily. You can download it for Android and for iOS.

This is the first post of a series on Computer and Information

Continue reading "All the Wrong Questions: When did you Change your Wi-Fi Password last?"

Code of Ethics

--Originally published at Computer Security - Arturo Mendoza

Code of Ethics

Here goes my first post, this is a simple one about code of ethics in my university where I found some code of what is right and what is wrong, but not all of us follow it.

You can't smoke, eat and drink inside the classrom
Code of Ethics

Or... you can.
Code of Ethics

But, any kind of drinks or food? where can I search more information about it? It is important to follow the code of ethics, but also is important that the code be clear for the user.

We can found these kind of problems all the time around us.

Justin Luebke

Code of Ethics

--Originally published at Computer Security - Arturo Mendoza

Code of Ethics

Here goes my first post, this is a simple one about code of ethics in my university where I found some code of what is right and what is wrong, but not all of us follow it.

You can't smoke, eat and drink inside the classrom
Code of Ethics

Or... you can.
Code of Ethics

But, any kind of drinks or food? where can I search more information about it? It is important to follow the code of ethics, but also is important that the code be clear for the user.

We can found these kind of problems all the time around us.

Justin Luebke

I can CIA you

--Originally published at Computer Security

While surfing the Internet a lot of thins happen with the websites that we visit. Some of them store information about our location or some data that we provide to log in or sign in, but what if this information falls into the wrong hands?

As we know, in the Internet there´s all kinds of people (even those ones that you couldn’t ever imagine), some of them are malicious persons looking for even the minimum vulnerability on the websites for retrieving information or taking advantages in some way of the security breaches. This breaches could be found by curious people that are looking at the source code of the websites, by people that know about vulnerability on the security or even those users that want to play to be God.

Because of that, exists the renamed CIA (no, I’m not talking about that one that probably is watching you while you reading this)

https://giphy.com/embed/li4hG3WqUqDNm

I’m talking about Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. This model that allows us to be safe that the websites that we provide our information it’s safe in it (it could be encrypted), that ensures that the information is not altered by malicious people and that can only be acceded by authorized users.

https://giphy.com/embed/bWqZQ2qlXV0Gc

So, it’s not that bad, if the website accomplishes this specifications you can relax, so keep watching memes calmly.

https://giphy.com/embed/14f7i886ytj56