Category: Personal Security

Watch your back

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So you think you’ve been hacked

As an individual, where do you turn if you think you’ve been breached and your antivirus software tells you nothing?

Your Internet Service providers? Your bank?
Your email provider?
The techie friend of a friend who can find a job in the industry?
Your insurance company?
Your IT department at work?

…or your friendly neighbourhood CISSP® – Certified Information Systems Security Professional.

Generally, though, it’s down to you and Google to figure it out.

Take your life offline if you get hacked.

In the meantime, you stumble around telling friends you’ve been hacked or that your tech is crap.

Naturally, social media is a massive help to find out if someone else has the same problem.  In my experience, the emotional pressure is one of the biggest issues.  Feelings of WTF and “why are they doing this to me” cloud your judgement and objectivity.

Don’t be a victim, be a warrior. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
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Re-directing the bad guys

According to key Internet players, over 90% of bad request use DNS.

Cisco recently acquired OpenDNS probably for this main reason.  Messing with DNS is not even on the radar for most end-users but OpenDNS actually makes it easy.

Problem: Your 11-year old has a brand-new Smartphone and you realise they have access to ANY content on the internet.

Most of us don’t like to turn off Data

Solution: change to DNS from Google to OpenDNS

End result: no more phone confiscation arguments

This is a typical solution that should not be explained to non-technical or tech scared parents.  Just get the most tech savvy adult in the family to configure it and forget about it, no nerd discussions or debates.

Downside: This is only a partial solution as most phones do not allow you to mess with the DNS settings for cellular.

So we can change stuff for WiFi only.  Unfortunately, most of us are using cellular networks for internet access even when we are home.

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Work it Out

A pure upbeat and optimistic rhythm. Given all the crap I’m handling, this is a perfect theme tune for the long weekend.

I’m faced with various degrees of bad and worst decisions as opposed to my normal tactical good or better choices.  I’ve allowed external influences to box me into corners with sheer cliff edges and can only blame myself.

In the meantime, I’m limping like a lame duck with crippling pain in my left lower calf muscles, a physical memory of reaching the Alpl 14, 8671 Alpl, Austria summit last week.

Try not to upset the pile

On the upside, one of my mentees just secured a full-time job.  Feels good to be part of someone’s happiness.

Come, my selector.

“We gonna work it out” Breakwater 1978

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Brutal CIA problems

Trying to get the right balance of Data Confidently, Integrity and Availability is really tough and ever changing.

Any taxi app will need your GPS data to locate you but does that app need to know your ever move ALL the time?

That taxi app now knows when you wake up, go to bed and how often you go to the bottom of your garden. You give this data away for free.  Apps like Uber give the end-user an all or nothing solution knowing very well that users cannot be bother to turn off location services or throw on a VPN when they don’t need a taxi.

Data CIA status is like catching butterflies, it can be done but it’s bloody difficult and requires resilience, tactics and skill.

Your taxi watches you globally
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We told you

It’s not so long ago that the IT sector told the world to get connected or cease to exist.

Now we are telling the world that there is no option but to use the Gigaflops of computing power available in Cloud computing.  Everything is now connected to everything and we are finally globally vulnerable with multiple conflicting privacy, data availability and security issues.

Now what?