Alert!! Online Security Threat!

Hackers nowadays are genius! Planting trojans, worms/keyloggers, hacking into computers and stealing information becomes their number ONE hobby in their life! Some do it out of fun and some with nasty intentions.

The worried ones always find ways to stop hackers from intruding into their private information and destroying their data. They go from anti-virus programs such as AVG, Norton Antivirus, Kaspersky and lots more anti-virus programs. As technology upgrades, the threat level increases too.

WiseGeek shares the TOP 10 Online Security Threat which are:

1. Web servers and services
2. Workstation Service
3. Windows Remote Access Services
4. Microsoft SQL Servers (MSSQL)
   
5. Windows Authentication
6. Web Browsers
7. File Sharing Applications
8. Local Security Authority Subsystem (LSAS) Exposures
9. Mail Client
10. Instant Messaging

Are our data still safe?? How to mitigate these threats?
In my opinion, mitigation is almost impossible. However to avoid, there are ways such as:

Installing firewalls

Lots of software developers have created firewalls. Then firewall works similar as a police traffic, checking network traffics and block unauthorized passages and only permitted ones. However, I personally find firewall sometimes quite annoying and a waste of time. Especially in stress and tensed moments when you need to access into a site urgently and then there comes the firewall message stating whether to allow access or not. It can be a little irritating at times. But to protect from harmful threats, firewall comes to the rescue! However, sometimes it didn't really work because our "itchy" fingers might click and authorized the access of harmful sites.

Encryption

For example when using Paypal, while transferring information, people can tap into the line in which the data is transferring and steal it.When Computer1(C1) is sending to Computer2(C2), and before it reaches C2, the hacker can tap into the line to steal the data. Usually before sending a data or important information out, it is advisable to encrypt your data. In case if someone did tap into the line and steal the data, he will not be able to understand what he had stolen unless he has a program which can decrypt it.Otherwise, in Paypal for example, if the hacker succeeds in stealing your number and passwords, he may finish up your money on any online transactions. Last time it is not safe to use ATM and online transactions but nowadays, if people want to transfer money from one account to another, they will receive an SMS to confirm the transaction. Upon confirming the transaction with sms, then it will proceed in transferring the money. But! not to worry~ Lately Microsoft and other online transaction has already performed data encrypting in order to save and ensure customer's data is safe.

Protect Your Data with IP Security
Can data be protected using IP Security? Of course it can be done! IP Security can protect your data when it's in transit provided both the sending and receiving systems have to support it. Windows 2000 and later Microsoft operating systems have built-in support for IP security. Worry not, because IP security operates at a lower level of the networking model. There is this program called Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) which IPsec uses to encrypt data that are sensitive and confidential. It can operate in tunnel mode, for gateway-to-gateway protection, or in transport mode, for end-to-end protection. Therefore, we can be assured that our data is quite safe through IP Security.

Password Protected Documents

Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader provide such functions allowing user to set passwords on confidential documents. With the availability of these functions, our data can be deemed to be safe. However, keyloggers can be embedded in spyware allowing private information to be transmitted to an unknown third party. A keylogger is a program that runs in the background, recording all the keystrokes. Once keystrokes are logged, they are hidden in the machine for later retrieval, or shipped raw to the attacker. The attacker then scrutinize them carefully in the hoping to find passwords, or possibly other useful information that could be used to compromise the system. This leaves our data not safe anymore.

All in all, as much as developers has become smarter to develop more programs to save us, the hackers have also became smarter to creating ways to continue stealing data. It's a battle of who is improving faster than the other to outsmart them.