What You Need to Know About Mobile Security.

Our Mobile Life

Mobile devices have become an integrated and important part of many of our lives today and that will likely increase rather than decrease. What we do with our devices, where we do it, and how we do it can put our privacy or security at risk. A few simple rules can greatly diminish the chance of you becoming a victim to the all too common cyber attack today.

First, make sure that your device is locked with a pass code, or even better, a biologic input like a finger print scanner. This will not completely secure the device but will slow someone down if they find it or steal it. Also make sure that you have a remote wipe program installed. This will allow you to remove your data or at least make it more difficult to recover if you lose the device.

Second, when we talk about installing apps on the device consider these things. The more apps you have on the device the more areas you are creating for vulnerabilities open to attack. Only install apps that you really need, and if you have apps that you have stopped using remove them. In security this is called reducing your vulnerability foot print. Another rule for apps is to only download apps from trusted vendors. Generally stick to the app stores for your product. This is not a sure fire way of protecting yourself but these vendors do conduct some control measures to evaluate if an app has a vulnerability or malware. Also if you are using an android device be aware of what the app is asking to have access to. For example a flashlight app should not need your location or contacts.

Third, be careful of using your device's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functions. Operating your device on an unsecure Wi-Fi can give access to potential criminals that are in the area. Leaving your device's Bluetooth on can also create an open door for hackers to access your device. Only use your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on trusted networks, and when you are not using these functions, shut them off. This can be an inconvenience sometimes but consider it the same as locking your car when you leave it.
  

The last rule is don't keep highly sensitive data on your device. This would mean not keeping a list of passwords, bank account information, employee identification, or social security numbers. If it is necessary to have sensitive information on the device, it should be encrypted.

These devices allow us to improve our lives in great ways, but we just need to use them with some awareness and responsibility.    

Week 10: Email Marketing

I do believe that in most cases Email newsletters are a great tool to stay in touch with your customers. I also think that it is extremely important to not over do it, and that your content must be considered valuable by the recipients. If you send too often and don't have much new content they can have a negative effect and drive customers away quickly.

For Tech by Templin I would consider using a news letter possibly on a weekly or monthly basis. I would include a list of the topics and teasers for the posts I made in that period. It is always good to try and refresh the connection with customers especially in today's busy and highly competitive atmosphere. Holidays are great to send personal greeting and well wishes and try to build a sincere caring connection with my followers.

I do think that people that have already subscribed to your media channels get a sort of news update with each post. I wonder if adding that with another contact might become too much?

Week:9 Using categories to organize content for your audience.

Using categories on my blog would be helpful to organize the content into areas that would fit different types of readers. The categories that I would likely use would be personal computing, enterprise systems, and leading edge technologies. Using these categories would allow me to offer a wider range of content and increase the size of the potential audience. Writing content in these categories would also offer some variety that readers could transition through or easily find similar topic content. The more organized and easy the content is to find the more likely I will be to have readers who return and enjoy the blog. I visit lots of sites that are a mess of mixed content that I have to search though endlessly to find what I want. These are site that I generally do not visit unless I have too. Categories or labels if used correctly can also help potential readers to find your article if it has been indexed for those key words or phrases. If I categorize articles it will also let me see easily what types of content are most popular and concentrate my energy in those areas.

How personal should your Blog be!, Week 9

I think this question would be different for every person and business that is blogging. For me and the type of blog I have created, adding some of my personal feelings or experiences into the blog is a good idea. I think that it allows people to gain a sense of my character and better evaluate if their character aligns with mine. It helps to open the way for building trust, and when giving advice or teaching there must be trust.

I think that it also can keep the content delivery interesting and unique to your style. This will help to set you apart from others who are similar and competing with you for audience. I think that care must be taken so that my style of personal touch does not diminish the professionalism that some topics I will be posting about require. I also think that it would be wise to balance the personal interjection so as to not project a bias or distract from the focus of my content. Whenever I write or speak, I let it carry some of my personality and style because I always want to be like me not like a machine devoid of personality or personal feeling.  But, hey, that is just me, and I always say "too each their own."

Week8, Twitter to educate yourself and expand your reach.

This week I used Twitter to find people and companies that I wanted to follow. I followed companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Bromium, and Palo Alto Networks because they always have news about leading security and technology issues. I will use this to help me stay up to date on the these issues and be able to pass the information along to my blog readers. I also placed the accounts that I followed into lists so that I can quickly look for the subject feeds that I want. I made lists for educational users, product manufacturers, and technology writers. It will allow me to share me tweets with certain groups as well to better match my audience with the content.

Finding the right people to follow was an educational exercise. There are a so many users out there and reading their tweets gave me a better idea of who I was really looking for. I think that this will be a continually evolving list at least for awhile. I already notice that it is important for me to limit the users I follow to avoid being overwhelmed by tweets.

Finding the best time for posting tweets will be hard for me to determine until I have more followers. As I continue to grow the sphere that I am touching I will look for those most effective tweet times.

I was able to link my Facebook page to Twitter and this will be very helpful in reducing the amount of work needed to post to both media channels.

How do you remember all your passwords and keep them secure?

Having a strong and unique password for each account you have is an important security measure you should take. I know many people who are frustrated by trying to remember all of the different passwords they need to have. Some people give up and use one or two passwords for all their accounts. Or they make a list of their passwords and keep them on their phone, computer or written down in their wallet. Each one of these is a serious security weakness and can allow one breach of security to compromise all, or a number of your accounts.

If you are in this group I have a suggestion that will help. First, creating a strong password is important. It should never be a dictionary word, or sequential numbers or letters, and you should not use anything based from your personal data, like your birth-date. You should also have a unique address for each account. So with these simple criteria in mind here is a way that you can create strong passwords that are unique and that you can remember.

First we know that most passwords today require a mixture of letters and numbers and are generally between 6 to 10 characters long. With this in mind we can start to create a system for our passwords. Let's assume you need a pass word for Gmail. A simple way to create a unique password for this account would be to use four letters from Gmail and for numbers that you choose.





For example: gLmi3971  This system is the first letter, last letter(capitalized), second letter, fourth letter, then a set of numbers that you can use for each account. If I had a Yahoo account the password would be "yOao3971". This is a simple system that will give you a unique password for each account and all you have to do is remember your system for creating them. This is definitely better than using a single password or a dictionary word.

To increase the level of security you can increase the complexity of your system or vary it for different types of accounts. For example you might have one system for non-sensitive accounts and a different one for more sensitive accounts like bank accounts.

Week 7, 2nd post: Social Media and My Business Model.

The three businesses that I found that are using visual social media are “Krebsonsecurity”,”TheNewBoston”, “EliTheComputerGuy”.

The first of these is Krebs on Security. He uses Twitter, Facebook, and a blog. Most of the things he posts have pictures for visual, but not much in the way of video.  He seems to be using Twitter and Facebook to expand his exposure for his articles. Often they are simply links to his posts. I would say that for Krebs on Security visual media is not a priority and is mostly used to enhance his textual articles.

The second business that I looked at was The New Boston. This is a pretty different type of approach and visual is the mainstay. He uses YouTube and his website. He has used Twitter and a blog but seems to have abandoned them or uses them very little now. His website is mainly an organizational portal for his YouTube channel. The focus of his content is teaching, and videos lend themselves very strongly to this. He is extremely effective with this style of content delivery.

The last business that I examined was Eli the Computer Guy. He uses a website, YouTube, Twitter, and a blog built into his website. Eli has created his media channel around teaching videos and it has worked very well for him. He does use YouTube to make commentary type episodes. This also seems to work well and they have high viewing numbers.

I think that visual media channels have a definite usefulness in instructional and commentary content delivery businesses. It can be used in differing styles and amounts as shown by these three businesses. I think the successful use of visual social media would really depend on the personality of the person, as well as, the type and depth of content. I will try to use visual social media to be both a supporting role in expanding the touch of my content, and in a primary role when it serves as the best media to convey the content.

Krebs On Security

http://krebsonsecurity.com/

twitter, facebook, Blog/website

The New Boston

http://thenewboston.blogspot.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/TheNewBoston/

https://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston

https://twitter.com/bucky_roberts

Eli the computer guy

https://www.youtube.com/user/elithecomputerguy

http://www.elithecomputerguy.com/

http://www.elithecomputerguy.com/blog-posts/

https://twitter.com/elicomputerguy