Simple Computer Security

Those of you who know me know that I am a major advocate of VPNs. I think they're great security tools for keeping your public IP address less public. They're similar to a PO box in the sense that you give out that address instead of your actual home address, ideally making it less likely someone unwanted will show up at your front door. VPNs have many practical security applications. First and foremost they protect your information from prying eyes when you're using public Wi-Fi, but a lot of them also provide added features like DNS adblocking, Malware domain blocking, and IPv6 prevention. For this review, I'll be comparing the Cypherpunk to an industry standard Private Internet Access (PIA).  Right off the bat, you can see that Cypherpunk is very stylized. It certainly goes for the look of cyber. It's a simple button press to activate the VPN. Then you get this stylized graphic showing ciphertext moving across the screen. There are 35 ser

A few days ago I posted Simple Security: The basics  to cover a few easy and cheap ways to ways to help secure your Windows environment. Today I am planning on going a step further and covering some more advanced techniques to help secure your environment. Given that this is a moderate set up I am going to be trying to keep things as cheap as possible.  On my advanced guide I will be talking about expensive high-quality security solutions like Cisco ASA, SonicWall, Pallo Alto, ESXI, Domain Controllers, enterprise level malware protection like SideWinder, VM servers, and Splunk. In today's guide I will be discussing how to set up tools like Host Level Intrusion Detection Systems (HIDS), Network Level IDS (NIDS),  System Information and Event Management servers, and Smart Firewalls.  I'll also talk about ways to automatically aggregate data from opensource intelligence (OSINT) and using that to feed the analysis systems that will be helping to protect your network. First, l

Almost every day we heard about a new breach, a new piece of Malware, or a new threat. Computer security is more than a job for me, it's a hobby. I wanted to take a moment to provide some simple unobtrusive security measures to help harden your Windows computer. While I will mention Antivirus, and patching up front the guide will cover more than just that. Antivirus: Let's face it. This is a given in today's day and age. It's become such a necessity that Microsoft is giving it out for free with every version of Windows 8 and up pre-installed, and optional download for all the rest. While Windows Defender is a great tool it, like everything else, has a host of vulnerabilities. Recommendation: McAfee for this price Bitdefender for its security. McAfee is a widely hated company, especially after it scored a 47% on virus detection ratings but the DoD offers a complete McAfee security suite to its members for free. This suite provides things like, email