Introduction:
We have grown very dependent on our technology devices, so it’s natural to want to take them with us when we travel. However, traveling with phones, tablets, or laptop computers exposes them to more threats than normal including liquid and physical damage, theft, loss, and cyber attacks. Planes, cars, trains, and hotels are technology-hostile environments. The following recommendations are gleaned from millions of miles of business and personal travel as well as customer experiences.
Liquid Damage:
Don’t put a water bottle in the same backpack or carryon as your phone, tablet, or laptop computer. Seems obvious, but we see the consequences all the time. Water bottles are prone to leaking anyway, but on planes, the pressure changes significantly increase the probabilities.
Don’t have drinks and your devices on airplane seatback trays at the same time. Turbulence or someone accidentally bumping into the seat or tray can cause liquid damage.
Liquid spills cause costly damage to devices or outright kill them almost immediately due to short circuits or, after a time delay, due to corrosion.
If your device was exposed to liquid and was turned off, do not turn it on. If it was on, turn it off immediately, and don’t turn it back on. You can wipe off the exterior, but don’t try to dry it out with rice or a hairdryer. Do not try to test it. Bring it in as soon as possible for a professional to try to save it.
Physical Damage:
Checked luggage is exposed to extreme handling shocks, cold, heat, and rain. Carryon luggage falls out of overhead bins all the time. Devices get cooked in very hot cars or used outside in bright sunlight. When you’re travelling, before you put valuable technology anywhere, think about its safety, and don’t expose it to unnecessary risk.
Theft:
Leaving your valuable devices unattended in airports, cars, or hotel rooms or putting them in checked luggage is an invitation to thieves. Keep them with you at all times, and be vigilant.
Loss:
Travelers absent-mindedly leave valuable devices in airplanes, trains, taxis, rental cars, buses, hotels, and restaurants. Sometimes, with significant effort and/or expense, they get them back, and sometimes they don’t. If you’re travelling for business, your schedule may be hectic and your surroundings unfamiliar. It’s pretty easy to get distracted. If you’re travelling for pleasure, the whole point is to relax in unfamiliar surroundings. It’s pretty easy to lose focus. When you’re travelling, make a special effort to keep track of your technology.
Cyber attacks:
Using unfamiliar networks is an unfortunate fact of life for travelers. Most public networks are not very secure. The probability of exposure to cyber security threats is much higher when travelling. To avoid infections and attacks, your devices should be protected by a defense-in-depth. Check out our posts about security for more guidance.
Unless you are certain that the network that you’re using is secure, avoid doing anything online that would expose your sensitive information, e.g. banking or credit card transactions.
Security Scanners:
Travelers frequently question the safety of security scanners. Security scanners use very low levels of radiation and/or magnetic fields to detect dangerous objects and are not a significant threat.
Conclusion:
We’re all very dependent on our technology devices, so we want them with us when we travel. Travel exposes them to more threats. So, be careful out there. clickaway computer services is always happy to help you keep your devices safe.
Information Source: - https://clickaway.com/how-to-travel-with-your-tech/
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Introduction:
If you connect your technology to a network or plug in any type of portable storage device, there are bad guys out there trying to attack you. Without protection, some of those attacks will succeed. You have probably heard of at least some forms of attack: viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, keyloggers, ransomware, adware, and rootkits. The good news is that you don’t need to be a cyber-security expert with detailed knowledge of attacks and protection tools to protect yourself. However, you do need to know a few basics and to take responsibility for getting them in place.
The Basics:
There are five basic components to home and small business security:
Secure wireless network credentials,
A capable and properly configured firewall,
Capable anti-malware software,
Phishing attack awareness and avoidance
Backup.
Together, they provide a layered defense (a defense-in-depth) against cyber-attacks. In this blog post, we’ll introduce the basic defense layers. In other blogs, we will provide enough information about each layer to protect yourself. But first, why should you care?
The Risk:
Successful cyber-attacks can be extremely expensive and disruptive. If your technology stores financial data, your bank and credit card accounts might be drained, and you may have to shut down all of your existing accounts and open new ones. If your technology stores personal data, your identity might be stolen. If the data stored on your technology is valuable, it might be held for ransom or erased. The technology upon which you depend might be rendered unusable, which could disrupt your life and/or business.
Secure Wireless Network Credentials:
When you first get your network router, it will have a default username and password. If you do not change them, your wireless network is vulnerable to a fairly easy attack. An attacker would only need to park near your home or workplace, and try the most common default credentials to gain access to your network. Your job, here, is simple: if you have not already done so, change your router’s username and password to secure ones and write them down somewhere secure.
Firewalls:
A firewall is a network security component that prevents unauthorized access to a network. It inspects incoming and outgoing messages using a set of security rules to identify and block threats. Firewalls can be implemented as physical network hardware devices, software that runs on network routers, or as software that runs in your computer. Your job, here, is to be sure a firewall is installed and properly configured. That does not mean you have to install and configure it yourself. ClickAway can help you put this layer in place.
Capable Anti-Malware Software:
The word “malware” derives from malicious software. Malware is software designed to gain unauthorized access to systems and then do harm. Its purpose might be theft, extortion, damage, or disruption. Malware infects systems either through networks or plug-in storage devices.
Not surprisingly, anti-malware software is designed to prevent malware infections.
Beware, however, not all antimalware software offerings are equal. Some of the best-known offerings are ineffective, inefficient, and annoying. One is even Russian-owned.
Most offerings have free versions, but the paid versions offer significant advantages. The paid versions automatically and frequently update their threat profiles, do regularly-scheduled and manual scans, facilitate quarantining threats, and in some cases, offer real-time network and plug-in protection. The free versions only do manual scans, and many do no not have quarantining functionality.
ClickAway recommends, sells, and installs best-in-class anti-malware software, and we would be happy to help you get this layer of security in place.
Phishing Attack Awareness and Avoidance:
Phishing is an attack that tries to fool you into giving a hacker with malicious intent access to your technology. It starts when you receive an email, phone call, or text message that appears to come from a company or person you know but is actually from a bad actor trying to get access to your technology for malicious purposes. The idea is to either scare or entice you into calling, clicking on a button or link, or responding to a text message. The majority of phishing attackers impersonate big banks or credit card companies, technology companies like Microsoft and Apple, or online retailers like Amazon.
Some antimalware software may protect you from email-launched malware. However, no antimalware software can protect you from harm if you give a bad actor remote access to your technology.
The only effective protection is your awareness of the risk, being skeptical of calls, emails, and text messages like those described above, and avoiding giving strangers access to your technology. If you have even the slightest doubt, call ClickAway before giving anyone access to your technology.
Backup:
Even if all the protection layers above are in place, there is still a small probability that a new, novel attack might succeed. What happens then? The last layer of protection is a current backup of your valuable data or your entire system. With that backup, ClickAway can quickly restore your system to a pre-attack state and significantly mitigate your risk.
If you are not doing regularly-scheduled backups, ClickAway will be happy to help you set up a backup program.
Conclusion:
The risk associated with cyber-attacks can be huge. Protecting yourself is relatively easy, and the cost is a small fraction of the risk. If you do not have all of these layers in place, please take action now.
You can get more details from other ClickAway security blog posts:
Firewalls – Don’t Get Burned.
Anti-Malware – What You Need to Know.
What Is Phishing and How Not to Get Caught?
Backup – What You Need and How to Do It.
Original Source: - https://clickaway.com/how-to-keep-your-technology-secure-the-big-picture/
Malware:
The word “malware” derives from malicious software. Malware is software designed to gain unauthorized access to systems and then do harm. Its purpose might be theft, extortion, damage, or disruption. Malware infects systems either through networks or plug-in storage devices.
You have probably heard of at least some forms of malware: viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware, key loggers, ransom ware, adware, and root kits. The only things that you really need to know about them are that they pose a huge risk and that you need capable anti-malware software installed to prevent them.
The Risk:
Successful malware attacks can be extremely expensive and disruptive. If your technology stores financial data, your bank and credit card accounts might be drained, and you may have to shut down all of your existing accounts and open new ones. If your technology stores personal data, your identity might be stolen. If the data stored on your technology is valuable, it might be held for ransom or erased. The technology upon which you depend might be rendered unusable, which could disrupt your life and/or business.
Anti-Malware Software:
Not surprisingly, anti-malware software is designed to prevent malware infections.
Beware; however, not all antimalware software offerings are equal. Some of the best-known offerings are ineffective, inefficient, and annoying. They are ineffective because they do not detect and remove all threats. They are inefficient because they take too long to do their job, and they slow your device down by consuming way too much of its resources. They are annoying because they continually bombard you with ads and unnecessary messages. One is even offered by a Russian-owned company, and Russia is home to many malware developers.
All anti-malware software offerings scan your system to detect and report threats. The best ones scan your system’s memory; startup items, the registry, and files system. Most offerings have free versions, but the paid versions offer significant advantages. The paid versions automatically and frequently update their threat profiles, do regularly-scheduled and manual scans, facilitate quarantining threats, and in some cases, offer real-time network and plug-in protection. The free versions only do manual scans, and many do no not have quarantining functionality. Given the risks outlined above, click away computer services strongly recommends paid offerings.
Click Away recommends, sells, and installs best-in-class anti-malware software, and we would be happy to help you get this layer of security in place.
Original Source: - https://clickaway.com/anti-malware-software-what-you-need-to-know/
First, the bad news: if your computer has access to the internet, bad guys on the internet could have access to your computer to carry out a cyber attack. Now, the good news: a properly configured, capable firewall will provide an important layer of protection.
What is a firewall?
A firewall is a security component that blocks unauthorized message traffic from entering and/or leaving a network. Network messages are sent in packets, and firewalls inspect those packets against a set of rules to identify and block threats. Those rules can be based on message source, destination, and/or content. For example, you could configure rules that block messages from specific countries or websites. Firewalls can be implemented as physical network hardware devices, software that runs on network routers, or as software that runs in your computer.
What is the best firewall for you?
Most of our customers’ networks serve homes or small businesses. For those applications, separate physical hardware devices are usually overkill.
To access the internet, your network needs a router and it is typically integrated with a modem in a device called a gateway. The router/gateway may be provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), or you may provide your own. These days, almost all routers/gateways have integrated firewalls, and they should be turned on.
Windows, Apple IOS, and Linux operating systems all have built-in software firewalls. The Windows firewall is usually enabled by default, but it is possible that is disabled; you should check to be sure it is enabled. The IOS firewall cannot be disabled. The Linux firewall is disabled by default, so it should be enabled. You can also buy add-on software firewalls.
For the typical home or small office, the combination of the router and operating system firewalls is probably a good choice.
Configuration
In most cases, the default firewall configuration is a good starting point but may not protect you against all of the threats you are experiencing. Most of our customers are probably uncomfortable configuring their firewalls. Call or visit a Click Away store to get help.
Warning
While a firewall is a necessary protection layer for your network, it is not sufficient. You also need high quality antimalware software by Click Away best computer services near me. Please see our blog post on antimalware software for more information.
Resource URL: - https://clickawaytech.blogspot.com/2023/12/firewalls-dont-get-burned.html
Protecting your technology from cyber attacks is very important, but even if you have good antimalware software and properly configured firewalls on your devices, hackers may still attack your devices by phishing. No, that’s not a misspelling.
Phishing is an attack that tries to fool you into giving a hacker with malicious intent access to your technology.
The Risk:
Successful phishing attacks can be extremely expensive and disruptive. If your technology stores financial data, your accounts might be drained, and you may have to shut down all of your existing accounts and open new ones. If your technology stores personal data, your identity might be stolen. If the data stored on your technology is valuable, it might be held for ransom.
How Phishing Attacks Work:
A phishing attack starts when you receive an email, phone call, or text message that appears to come from a company or person you know but is actually from a bad actor trying to get access to your technology for malicious purposes. The idea is to either scare or entice you into calling, clicking on a button or link, or responding to a text message.
The majority of phishing attackers impersonate big banks or credit card companies, technology companies like Microsoft and Apple, or online retailers like Amazon.
The call, email, or text message may say that there is some problem with your device and the caller/ sender can help you get that resolved. Or it may describe an enticing offer. If the bad actor gets you to call, he will try to get you to install some remote access software and give him permission to use it. If the bad actor gets you to click on a button or link in an email or respond to a text message, that will launch a program that gives the bad actor access. Once the bad actor has access to your technology, he will install some form of malware which he plans to use later to extract data, corrupt your device, and/or set up a ransom situation.
If you are an Apple user, be especially warry of giving anyone you don’t personally know your Apple ID It can be used to cause all kinds of harm. The same goes for Microsoft Account credentials.
Protection:
Some antimalware software may protect you from email-launched malware. No antimalware software can protect you from harm if you give a bad actor remote access to your technology.
The only effective protection is your awareness of the risk, being skeptical of calls, emails, and text messages like those described above, and avoiding giving strangers access to your technology. Don’t go for the bait.
Recommendations:
No reputable manufacturer or software company will call you about issues on your device or ask for payment to help. If an email seems too good to be true, it probably is bogus. Click Away recommends:
Never give anyone you don’t personally know permission to install or use a remote access tool.
If you have any concerns about an email, check that its email address domain (last 2 elements: xxxxxx.xxx) matches the real company’s website and is spelled correctly. If the email seems bogus, don’t open it; just delete it. You can always use the real company’s website to contact them.
Never call a phone number on an email. If you want to call a company, go to their website, and get their real phone number.
Always be extremely skeptical. Better safe than sorry. When in doubt, give Click Away a call also you can search for the shop click away near me.
Back up your data frequently to reduce potential financial risk.
If you think you have been successfully phished, immediately contact any financial institutions where you have accounts that might be affected, turn off your device, and bring it in to Click Away for a free malware scan.
Resource URL: - https://clickawaytech.blogspot.com/2023/11/what-is-phishing-and-how-not-to-get.html