Let me ask you a simple question. How many sites are you a member of, and how many different usernames and passwords do you have?

Average internet user has hundreds if not thousands of different logins. Since trying to remember all those passwords is impossible, such user just write them down in an ordinary notepad or word file, and save them on her/his computer as-is, without any protection whatsoever.

May be you’re one of such users. If so, you need to secure this information asap. Otherwise, if your computer is hacked, all your passwords will be readily available to a perpetrator.

Believe me, computer hacking occurs much more often than you think. You probably think it happens to somebody else, but it will never happen to you, right?

Well, let’s see… You’re reading this post, so you’re obviously connected to the Internet. Can you honestly tell me that you know the exact permissions and protocols required by each program installed on your computer? Are you sure that you know the number of processes required by each program, correlated PIDs and port numbers used by this program both for incoming and outgoing connections, as well as ip range?

Do you also know how to identify stealth connections? And, to begin with, how to verify the authenticity of the application/program that you want to install?

If you don’t know answer to all these questions, then you can’t be sure whether your comp is safe or it’s already been hacked and is operated by another man.

I don’t want to scare you. I’m just telling you the facts.

So, if you now keep all your passwords on your comp, I highly recommend you to go right now and purchase RoboForm.

Without going too much into technical details, this password-protection tools stores and encrypts your usernames and passwords for numerous sites, and when you need to login, you just enter one master password. It also fills long registration and checkout forms for you with one click.

And since RoboForm runs a Black Friday Special, right now you can get a discount off first license.

Combine this with the fact that RoboForm uses strong encryption, and can sync your passwords to Pocket Pc and Palm, and you’ll see why I think it became a viable option for password management.

First of all, let’s be clear here. Right now I’m NOT talking about the ways to protect your computer from virtual theft. Virtual theft, which could happen through hacking into one’s computer or website over the Internet, is a far more advanced topic then the one that will be discussed today.

I have an entire course dedicated to the computer protection. If you’re interested to learn what you should do to protect your data from hackers, you might want to take a look at this course: Online Business Protection.

But today let’s talk about something that can be easily prevented, yet as of today the negligence in this area of data security causes huge headaches to many businessmen.

First let’s look at some facts.

• Fact Number 1 2,000 laptops and 5,000 smartphones are stolen every day.
• Fact Number 2 97% of stolen laptops are never recovered.
• Fact Number 3 Computers and smart phones are the #1 source of identity and business theft .

It also helpful to remember that 60% of businesses that were unfortunate enough to go through data loss, completely go out of business within 6 months. You business could be next if you don’t take proper precautions.

Now that I have your undivided attention, let’s see how we can avoid this unfortunate scenario. It’s time to talk about physical data protection.

The majority of people have hundreds if not thousands of usernames and passwords stored on their computers and smartphones in unencrypted format. If laptop or phone is stolen, perpetrators get easy access to email contacts, financial information, bank accounts, proprietary business plans, etc.

This obviously can lead to both identity theft and serious financial losses. Unfortunately, the majority of people don’t do anything to prevent the flow of events that would bring them in such a precarious position.

What makes the matters even worse, when laptop or a smart phone is lost or stolen, the likelihood of its data to be restored is slim to none. Unless there is a data backup stored somewhere in a secure environment. If there is a backup available, then data of course can be restored yet the probability to find the stolen item still remains miniscule. Let alone the chance to punish the thief.

Today I’ll share with you a great resource. It will help you not only to create automatic backups (just set up the system once, and it will automatically backup your data in two different datacenters). It also will allow you to recover your stolen item. You can also lock down your device before it’s retrieved. This way it will be much more difficult to steal your data. Or you can wipe out the data remotely from the device if you choose to do so.

It’s very inexpensive, plus they offer 1 Gb of backup for free. So go get your Smartphone and Laptop Protection now.

It’s an axiom that [tag]computer security[/tag] impossible these days without several security components. At the very minimum you should have anti-virus and anti-spyware programs installed on your computer. Those programs can minimize the risk of unwanted intrusions. There are many computer security packages, and they are not equal in their ability to identify and prevent potential attacks.

One of the most well-known internet security programs is a security line of Symantec products known as “Norton family”: Norton AntiVirus, Norton Internet Security, Norton Anti-Spyware Edition, etc.

Of course, Symantec claims that your computer will be totally secure and protected if you use their security products. The sad truth however, that Norton security products are known in the hackers world as theone of the most easiest to hack into.

The most sought after type of vulnerabilities are the ones that can grant remote access to user’s computer, and if this access can be obtained without authentication, it’s even better.

And Norton security products are so popular among average computer users that it make them almost as wide-spread as computers with some kind of Windows OS installed, and thus even more desirable targets for hackers.

A few days ago Symantec had to release a security warning about security vulnerability found in 2 ActiveX controls. The vulnerability belonged to the class of input validation errors.

This means that data received by user computer was not properly validated which could allow a malicious attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code with the rights of logged in user (which means no additional authentication is required). The only other thing that attacker would need to successfully complete the attack is to trick the user to go to the website where this code would run.

This vulnerability affected Norton AntiVirus, Norton Internet Security, and Norton System Works, version 2006 and Norton Internet Security, Anti Spyware Edition, version 2005. Symantec Corporate Edition and Symantec for Linux were not affected.

Symantec Security Response team realesed Bloodhound.Exploit.148 that patches this vulnerability.

If you’re using Norton security products and you regularly update virus definitions and signatures through LiveUpdate then you should be OK.

Otherwise click on your LiveUpdate Right Now!

You can learn more about this vulnerability from the Symantec website: “Symantec ActiveX Control Input Validation Error”

Symantec credits Secunia Research for reporting this issue. Funny thing that this exploit is announced as a new one.

But it was known to hackers community for over 3 months! Yes, the remote access computer vulnerability through the execution of arbitrary code within those Norton ActiveX was annonunced by one of the hackers group on their blog more than 3 months ago, and they even released proof of concept code proving their point.

That just gives to show you that Symantec is not very quick in pinpointing and liquidating newest threats. Plus their support department is notoriously slow in support responses.

So in the next post I’ll talk about other computer and internet security programs that offer better support, and have quicker response.