Smart Home Security Simplified: Easy Steps for Non-Techies

The last post introduced the idea of smart homes. Smart homes are exciting, but security can be a concern. Today, I’ll guide you through straightforward steps to secure your smart home without overwhelming you with technical details. When you’re done reading this piece, you’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of smart devices while keeping your home safe and stress-free. […]

Consumer Security Book Launch Update

  update 11/1/17: My book is in the hands of a great editor, at this point I’ve missed my hard deadline and I don’t want to launch during the holidays. It’s too late to make Christmas sale dates, so I’ll shoot for the beginning of 2018. from 7/4/17: I am so excited about the upcoming book launch. The title is Your […]

6 Things You Should Know About Flash Drives

These little gizmos are fabulous, aren’t they? They make it so easy to carry around everything you could ever need, in some cases even a whole operating system! I have some very geeky friends who have some distribution of Linux on a flash drive, and all they have to do is plug it into some computer somewhere and they have […]

The Top Things to Do To Avoid Malware

As a tech professional, it’s my job to clean up after computer “accidents.” But a more important aspect of my job is keeping them from happening. There is a lot of information on the web directed at cyber safety, and most of it is good.  But there is one thing that you can do more to keep you safe than any other […]

Critical Information on New Ransomware

Embed from Getty Images Hot off the press, there’s a new version on ransomware that is cheaper to unlock, and there’s bad news and more bad news. Yes, they charge only a portion of a bitcoin to get the key to unlock the files they’ve encrypted.  Except that they haven’t encrypted them. They’ve actually deleted the files. So if you […]

The Math Behind a Good Password

Embed from Getty Images This post is actually a preface to another one I’m in the middle of right now, on password managers. But I wanted to take a minute and explain why your workplace insists on bizarre passwords, and how you can capitalize on that in your personal life. Why are there password requirements? When you have to change […]

Are You Safe Using Snapchat?

The process of writing this article was much more educational than I anticipated. I started out to write about a breach of Snapchat usernames and phone numbers, so I could warn readers about using this service. Then I found out about the photo leaks—and more. I also found a significant amount of naiveté demonstrated by some of the bloggers who […]

Limit Your Exposure

Unless you always save to your external drive or your mapped drive on your home server, you might consider disconnecting when not in use. The encrypting malware is getting really sophisticated and extends its reach to your mapped drives. That means if your offsite online backup solution operates as a mapped drive, your safety net could become no more useful […]