There’s just one problem with my fireproof box; I don’t know what happened to the key. My five year old son liked to play with it, opening and closing it, and one day the key just disappeared. Now I’m sure that the key will turn up the next time I clean up my office — and thankfully there weren’t any important papers in it when he lost the key (I took them out before he decided to “decorate” my passport!) — but that does raise an important issue.

We buy those fireproof boxes so that our important papers will survive a fire. But what about the key? What good would it do if the box survived intact but you couldn’t put your hands on the key to unlock it?

I recommend that you keep one key with you (perhaps on your car key ring, since you’d probably grab that on the way out the door if there was a fire) and give the second key to somebody you trust (we call this “off site storage” in the security business). That way, should there be a fire (Heaven forbid!), there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to quickly open the box once it’s recovered.

I’ll be covering more fire tips in the days and weeks to come, so keep checking back.

Thanks,
Tom

Here we go again.

If you want to contribute to hurricane relief, please do so via some established charity that you KNOW, with 100% certainty, will use your donation for its intended purpose. I’m not going to list any here, nor will I recommend any.

Why? Because even some established charities made appeals for donations after Hurricane Katrina three years ago, yet some donations that people thought were going to go to provide relief for hurricane victims were used for other purposes.

But whatever you do, PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO AN EMAIL REQUEST FOR CHARITY, DON’T MAKE DONATIONS BASED ON A WEB PAGE YOU SEE, AND DON’T ASSUME THAT SO-CALLED “HURRICANE SALES” WILL USE THE PROCEEDS FROM THE SALE TO HELP HURRICANE VICTIMS.

Serious. If you really want to give (which is a good thing to do), find a legitimate charity and give through them.

If there’s one thing we learned from Hurricane Katrina, it’s that some people will simply take advantage of a tragedy to make a few quick bucks. Don’t let it happen again.

And above all, NEVER CLICK ON A LINK in any “Hurricane Whatever” emails. They very well could lead you to a site that installs malicious code on your server.

Thanks,
Tom

This is just one way that your password can be compromised.

How to get around this?

First, change your password frequently. I’ll talk about a neat (and inexpensive) tool in an upcoming post that makes this extremely easy.

Next, whenever possible, use secure means to connect to other computers on the Internet. We’ll talk about how to do this in an upcoming post.

But for now, just be aware of how you use your passwords. And by all means, NEVER make your password easy to guess!

–Tom

Here’s a simple trick to help prevent your computer from becoming infected and to better protect it: don’t visit web sites that you don’t know and trust. Sometimes it’s easy to tell if the site is OK; other times it won’t be as obvious. In either case, you can look to see if others trust it (links from other sites are a good indication, and Google can tell you how many sites link to a website). You can also see if there are any bad comments about the site.

And finally, trust your instincts. They usually won’t lead you wrong.

Stay safe,
Tom

And I’ve almost decided!

I want this site to be exactly as the name implies:

Simple. I want the information you receive here to be easy to implement.

Security. I want you to be able to do something with each bit of information that will improve some aspect of your security.

Tips. It’s not going to be comprehensive or all-encompassing. A “tip” is just a little extra; it’s not an entire paycheck!

But don’t worry; comments are always open (and I love to hear from you), so if there isn’t enough in a post and you want to know more, just ask and I’ll do my best to cover it in an upcoming post.

So we’ll soon be talking about Simple things (Tips) that you can do to improve your Security.

–Tom

And who am “I”? I’m Tom Brownsword, a certified computer security professional (CompTIA Security+ and CISSP) with an extensive background in security. Beyond the “computer security” aspect, I also have extensive experience in other areas of security from my military days.

While nobody can guarantee you that you’ll always be 100% safe, my goal is to give you frequent, short, and practical tips that you can apply right away to help make yourself and your loved ones more secure.

I welcome your comments!

Thanks for listening,
Tom