Review of ":It's Two A.M.: Do You Know Where Your Data Is and Who Can Access It?"

    My name is Stephanie Oakes, and for my third assignment in my CIS127 class at Mount Wachusett Community College, I chose to review and evaluate Jeffrey Allen’s paper “It’s Two A.M.: Do You Know Where Your Data Is and Who Can Access It?”

    This article was written about law office security, but I believe the information contained within the piece can benefit everyone.

    People always think about the safety of their car, their health, job security, and financial security, very few tend to think of their network security. With the advancement of technology, people can manage their whole lives on their personal computers and today even their mobile devices; banking, paying bills, retirement planning, and investment portfolios, all on devices that are easily lost or stolen.

     Do you know what your personal computer’s firewall is setup to block or protect? How about backup, do you regularly set up new restore points? Don’t forget about your mobile network, do you have and backup or cloud storage resources installed? What about anti-theft software? This article doesn’t tell you step by step how to fix these issues, but it gives us enough information to become more aware and gives the audience a place to start.

    The first topic Allen covers is physical security. Many of us have alarm systems and most everyone has a door lock. But these days, that just is not enough. Alarm companies now offer more services to protect your home including wireless service, home monitoring, motion detection, and remote systems. The more protection you have for your home the safer you will not only be, but your personal information as well. The article continues with the actual equipment, computers. Since we are just talking home security and personal equipment, I’ll skip over the locking it to your desk part. This section does bring up a good point on malware. Norton.com defines malware as “a category of malicious code that includes viruses, worms, and Trojan horses”. Allen tells us that we can minimize this risk by buying and installing reliable anti-virus software onto all of our computers and keeping it up to date.

     The next two topics are closely related, but I’m going to separate them into two different paragraphs because I think that they both have key points.

   The first one being password protection. This should always be the first step in protecting data files, personal files, and even your identity. All files, computers, and even mobile devices should be protected by passwords that are multi character, lengthy, with nothing personal or relevant to yourself. All too often, even with password protection a person’s personal files or identity is stolen because someone guessed a password such as “PASSWORD” or “letmein” or even your own name.  I learned that I am even guilty of incorrect password protection. A person should have a different password for each account they have and those passwords should be changed at least twice a year. Remembering what password goes with what account can be impossible, so remember to write them all down. But storing them in a secure place is important, otherwise what is the use of a password?

    Network security is just as important as password protection, which is why most professional networks are password protected. Think about it, your network is open and unprotected, if your neighbor is savvy enough, they may be able to get access to your home computer and all of your personal information.

     The mobile network is one most people forget about. Wireless networks such as 3G and Wi-Fi are just part of our everyday life now. These networks should also be protected, it’s as easy as changing the settings to make sure your device is not tethered to something else and is not a hotspot, sharing your network. With the explosion of mobile devices such as phones, tablets, IPad, and laptops comes a new security threat, theft. We now must be sure that our devices are on us or our eyes are on them at all times. Walking away from our devices, out of forgetfulness, even for a minute, increases that threat. Making sure your device is always with you will minimize the problem, also keeping as much personal and important information off your devises will lessen the threat of a stolen device, sometimes password protection isn’t always enough.

      In the event your personal device is stolen or damaged you should have a backup plan. That includes restore points on your computer and storage from cloud sites. Having multiple storage options guarantees that you will be able to retrieve your data from wherever you have an internet connection.

      It doesn’t matter if our use of computers or mobile devices it personal or professional, we can all employ the information in Jeffrey Allen’s article. This article can be the starting point of our safety map. Every one of us can be more aware of our actions and our safety protocols.

     After I finished reading Allen’s article I did a little reading in my textbook about malware, I was surprised to learn that there were more classifications of malware than just worms, viruses, and Trojan horses.  There are also back doors, rootkits, and spyware. Also that while malware usually only relates to one of those applications, some malware have multiple characteristics from two or three of the applications. Malware has many ways it delivers its destructive payload, malware can be delivered when a user opens an infected file, runs an infected program, boots a computer with a removable drive that is infected, when an event occurs such as a clock reaching a certain time, opening emails with infected attachments, and more often, navigating to an infected web site.

    I know that now that I have a better education of internet and network safety, and mobile and personal devices I will take better care to protect myself and my information.

 

 

Work Cited

Allen, Jeffrey. "It's Two A.M.: Do You Know Where Your Data Is And Who Can Access It?." American Journal Of Family Law 28.1 (2014): 20-24. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 May 2014. <http://ezmw.ez.cwmars.org:4200/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=94589596&login.asp?custid=wchstcc&site=ehost -live>.

 

Shelly, Gary B., Misty E. Vermaat, Jeffrey J. Quasney, Susan L. Sebok, and Steven M. Freund. Discovering Computers: Your Interactive Guide to the Digital World: Introductory. Boston, MA: Course Technology, Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.