Secure your devices - Here is how I do it

Secure your devices

Here is how I do it.

All Clouds Considered is brought to you by Cloud Genius®

Cloud Genius is a top 10 rated institution built by industry experts focused on helping businesses succeed with the cloud and helping you transform your professional career.

Take a test drive at https://be.a.cloudgeni.us

In the last couple we discussed password management, specifically using unique passwords that are strong and supplemented that with two factor authentication so that even if your password is compromised there is another layer of protection. And also making sure that all your passwords are stored inside a system which helps you manage your passwords. And Just last week a new research got published comparing how security experts and non – experts stay safe online. That paper outlines the results of two surveys, one conducted with a group of security experts and another with web users who are not necessarily security experts and the survey is actually very interesting because it compares and contracts responses from these two groups and tries to understand the differences as to why these differences exist.

There were several common grounds in the two groups. One of the fundamental ones was careful password management. And that is a priority for both types of people and it should be a priority for everybody because that is a critical thing to access and control your information that you want to keep safe. However, these two groups differed on their approaches to password management. Security experts relied heavily on password managers whereas the non-experts group did not.

This difference was primarily due to lack of education about benefits of using password managers. And perceived lack of trust in these programs. In fact, one of our podcast listeners commented that he makes the passwords so difficult that only he can remember and that no body else can hack his mind. And that is his security strategy. However, a password that people can remember is not secure enough.

A password that people can remember is not secure enough. Nilesh

Some of the key differences in the two approaches turned out to be around software updates and use of antivirus software. Experts in the security domain recognized the benefits of updates. Patch. Every time the operating system vendor or the software vendor provides a patch, it is important to receive the patch and apply it. And that is the standard approach that experts tend to take. Where as the non-experts are not clear on whether they should take this update or not. People tend to wonder whether updating software is always safe. What if some bad software comes down through the automatic update pipe? What if somebody misuses that channel to send malicious software down to my computer. That is a concern people have. I suggest that you read that paper and I am dropping a link in the show notes below.

I think that paper is a fascinating read. And here is something that I did with my phones and my devices after reading that paper. With my iPhone, I completed erased all the documents and settings and then installed new operating system straight from the source which is Apple iOS and I made sure not to restore from iCloud backup or any other back. Now this gave me a clean, freshly installed iPhone. and I had no other applications on that. So I began installing each and every application. And as I installed every application I made sure that I check the application settings. I made sure that I use a unique strong password with each of the services that I am installing and also back them up with a two factor authentication. I also removed any approved apps with Facebook, Twitter, Gmail. Each of these services had a bunch of approved apps that I may have approved in the past I removed approvals for all those that I don’t actually use. Now this has resulted in a dramatically improved experience. The phones are actually a little bit faster than I expected which is amazing. And also I know that each of these service connections that I have now established are secure the way that I expect them to be.

And an interesting fall out of all this… was that I have less applications. It is intrinsically difficult to set this up like this. and so in the process, I ended up with less number of applications on my phone which actually is a good thing. Less is more.

So this is what I did and I would suggest you give this a try. I know it is difficult. But give this a try and I know you will stand to benefit. Not only from a security perspective but also your phones and devices and computers will actually work faster. Give that a shot and let me know how it goes.

Join our discussion in the Cloud Genius community and chat with us on our chat channel where we hangout and learn from each other.

 


 

Want us to create an episode on a topic of your interest? Let us know and we gladly develop one. I am your host Nilesh. Look forward to seeing you online.

---

The Show Notes

“…no one can hack my mind”: Comparing Expert and Non-Expert Security Practices

Nilesh on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Facebook

Cloud Genius on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Facebook

Our Podcast Episodes

• Secure your devices – Here is how I do it
• Do you remember passwords?
• Reduce cloud vendor lock-in
• Do you remember to backup?
• Introducing All Clouds Considered

Our Blog Posts

• Secure your devices – Here is how I do it
• The power of open source
• Do you remember passwords?
• Reduce cloud vendor lock-in
• Do you remember to backup?
• Introducing All Clouds Considered
• Onnea Congratulations बधाई हो E ku ori ire అభినందనలు
  Our next global cohort just started!
• Cloud computing is really about sticking to core competence
• 2015 will have 18.2 million cloud jobs
  3.9 million in US with $91K median salary
• Available Globally – Next Series Starts Jun 19 via Video Conference

Secure your devices - Here is how I do it