More Web Security Measures for the Catholic Networker and Web Developer, 05/24/10

Introduction

An early article on web security is published in this site with the title, 8 Security Tips for Basic Catholic Web Site Development. It has been a year since that article has been published, and security concerns on the Web have been heightened. This article will continue from the security measures suggested in "8 Security Tips", and add more that are important and vital to consider in the present times. These are just suggestions. You are free to follow your own preferences, or to follow the suggestions given by other web sites. The suggestions listed below are specifically meant for Catholic networkers and web developers who work on a very economical budget and simply trust in the basic security given by free antivirus softwares online.

1. Longer passwords and more special characters

In the year 2002, it was basically safe to set a password of at most eight or nine characters. Now, it is best to add more characters to your password - with a minimum of at least 16 alphanumeric and special characters. Try not to set a pattern for your passwords. And compose it randomly with more special characters embedded within the password. You can also use the "~", the "|", and the "\". Some more advanced web sites accept European alphabet characters in composing a password. This would greatly help as you can also use the "ñ", "ô", "ç", and "æ".

2. On password managers

There are various sites which offer help in managing your password. This is good, but it would be safer not to entrust your passwords to third-party applications or software. As with anything third-party, if anything goes wrong with the site, application, or software, then your passwords might be compromised and a security breach will be experienced in your Catholic network. However, since it would also be impossible to memorize passwords with 16 or more alphanumeric and special characters, one safe and conservative way to guard them is simply to put them in your wallet. You can easily access these passwords as often as you can since they become part of your everyday attire. There is also another way to safeguard these passwords in case your wallet gets lost. One security measure is to jot down the characters of the password in reverse order or an order only you can understand.

3. On browsers, add-ons and toolbars

Some browsers want to help their clients by saving their passwords for them. This makes it easier for the client because when he revisits a site, his username and password are already inputted by the browser. All the client has to do is to click the button "log in". Again, present security on the Web is not perfect - especially if the browser version, add-on, or toolbar is new or still in beta. The safest thing to do is to log-in manually. Even though this takes more time, in the long-run, your passwords are safeguarded everytime you log-in on the Web.

4. Simple security fix

As we surf online, we sometimes might be prompted to upgrade a software or application. There are occasions when this causes a glitch in our computer system. One simple way to save your computer system from being infected totally, is to immediately close the user account which you have been using. As you close that user account, all the files connected with that user account are deleted - and also any file downloaded that has caused the computer glitch. But if you have made it a point to always back-up your files in other storage areas or devices, then closing down an infected user account would help solve the problem. What you can do is to create a new user account and recover the files that you have backed-up in your mobile storage devices.

New! 5. Email Notifications ("Notify")

At one time or another, you might get an email notification from a reputable site you are a registered member of. One important security measure to take is to check first who sent the notification - even if the link(s), in the email message contain the official domain of the site your are a member of. If you use Gmail, Gmail can present to you who sent that email. If you discover that the one who sent the notification has a different domain name from the domain of the site who sent you the notification, then it is safer not to click on the links given in this email. If you unknowingly or accidentally click on the links given in such type of email, and the link sends you to a page which says "attack site", then that web page might be hacked, or the email sent to you might be spam mail. Or it might be a phishing technique to get vital information from your account. To save your web accounts from being compromised, and your network from a security breach, you can perform the following suggestions:

• immediately change the password of your email account
• change the password of the reputable site which was used by a possible phishing activity
• and, always make it a point not to "store" your usernames and passwords in your favorite browser

Summary

As times get more difficult and tougher, we need to find means and ways to secure better our site, blog and networks on the Web. The best policy to follow is that wise old adage which says: "prevention is better than cure". If our accounts online can be prevented from a security breach, then we should always do so. This would save us a lot of anxieties, worries, and distresses caused by such security problems. The list given above are ideas which you can use to discover even better security measures for your specific Catholic site, blog and network.

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