Security? Yes Please

Unfortunately, the idea of inherent or unfettered security is a fleeting concept in the modern digital world. If at any time I let my guard down, an entire fleet of hijackers is seeking to infiltrate my personal information. Some individuals and organizations are looking for access to my financial records while others simply are investigating my personal information and/or spending habits. No matter the rationale, the concepts and strategies themselves are terrifyingly cold and penetrating.

I feel as though my privacy and security standards could use some rethinking. As we learned from the course material, extra steps can help in maintaining defensible security standards. To begin, I have consistently maintained a more complex security passcode for several phones I have owned. I believe that any extra protection that can be levied to a device that is present throughout my daily activities and in several circumstances demands higher security concerns. Additionally, I use more comprehensive passwords for a large portion of my online accounts. As described, utilizing a more complex passcode creates an extra level of security.

Even as I profess my security know-how, I will admit that I have left myself wide open to privacy attacks. But to buttress these concerns, I should work with my wife to step up her security standards. I know that she utilizes the same simple password and passcode throughout almost every one of her digital accounts. In effect, this puts my own security at risk! She is legally tied to almost every portion of my own security apparatus.

Beyond portable defense techniques, the accompanying strategies listed in this module for online protection seem entirely obtainable. For example, I regularly update my operating system on my phone and computer systems, eventually. I have always known that the updates consistently supply my machines with updated software that protects them, but for some reason or another, I don’t always immediately conform. I do not believe that any singular contributing factor causes my malfeasance, but prior news stories like Apple slow down scandal possible leads to my distrust. My wife has not updated her operating system on her phone really, ever!

Where I could really up my game, is the several methods mentioned in this week’s module dealing with the encryption methods and public wi-fi protections that are mostly foreign to me. I spend most of every day at the coffee shop that I work with my phone connected to the unsecured public wi-fi. It’s easier to just leave my network connected to the wifi so my device essentially is left unsecured all day; every day. This seems to me, like the ideal environment where investing in a virtual private network would be advantageous.

So how do I protect myself and my loved ones? What tools do I have that are any kind of effective defensive strategies? Is anything truly effective? Well, maybe not, but this course gave me several methods of self-preservation that may prove to be effective. In addition to myself, I have always desired to protect my friends, my family, and my wife from offensive forces that may attack our personal privacy.