More Web Security Measures for the Catholic Networker and Web Developer, 12/12/10

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 heightened. This article is a sequel to the "8 Security Tips", and will add important security measures to consider for the present times. The suggestions listed below are specifically meant for Catholic networkers and web developers who work on a small budget and simply trust in 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 "\" in your password. Some advanced web sites accept European alphabet characters in a password. This would greatly help as you can also use the "ñ", "ô", "ç", "æ" and other European characters in your password.

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, then your passwords might be compromised and a security breach will be experienced in your Catholic network. Since it is also difficult to memorize passwords with 16 or more alphanumeric and special characters, one safe and conservative way to guard them is simply to note them down and put them in your wallet. You can easily access these passwords as often as you can since they become part of your everyday work 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 decipher.

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 you surf online, you might be prompted to upgrade a software or application. There are occasions when this causes a glitch in your 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 when the glitch infected your computer system. 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. If you make it a point to always back-up your files in other storage devices, then closing down an infected user account would help solve the problem. What you can do is just create a new user account and recover the files that you have backed-up in your mobile storage device or other storage devices such as memory cards.

5. Email Notifications ("Notify")

At one time or another, you might get an email notification from a reputable site you are 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 operations:

• 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

5. SiteAdvisor.com

When you want to browse a site or download an application from the site, it would be best to check first the web security of the site. You can do this with SiteAdvisor.com. SiteAdvisor checks the security of web sites all over the Web, and it gives basic and detailed security information about the web site. You will know if the site is good if there are no spam reports about it, no phishing activity, etc. If you check a site and SiteAdvisor.com gives no report, then it probably is a new site and has not been checked yet. It would be wise not to browse sites that SiteAdvisor.com has negative reports about it, or new sites that have not yet been checked for security.

New! 6. McAfee Software

McAfee software is a great help for Web security. You can download their free software and install it in your computer system. As you make a search in your favorite search engine, McAfee will place a "green check" icon next to a search result to report that the site is safe to visit. If there is no "green check" icon next to a search result, then it may mean two things: either the site is new on the Web and it has not been analyzed yet by McAfee, or the site may have really dangerous security risks. McAfee software is free. You can download it from the web site. www.mcafee.com

Summary

As times get more difficult and tougher, we need to find means and ways to get more security for 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 many 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.

Visit, search, or subscribe to the updates of this network

Get ideas and updates on basic and small Catholic web site development, blogging, social networking, and web applications from:

• Friendfeed: Provides content ideas from Catholic news and technology updates
• Network feed: Discover ideas on blogging, web site development, social networking, and web applications
• A post at Catholic Internet Mission blog periodically summarizes all the articles and content in the Network feed. To visit, search or subscribe to the blog, click here
• Search Network: Search the network for ideas to write Catholic articles and to post to blogs.

Published Articles Directory

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6