Intellectual property rights and information security are taken very seriously at University of Lynchburg, and every effort is made to provide you the safest computing environment possible, while still providing reasonable access to information.
Security is more than passwords on computers. Even the most secure computing environments can become vulnerable if the users practice sloppy security habits in their daily work.
Excerpts from Microsoft’s “Ten Immutable Laws of Information Security”
See in full at Microsoft Technet.
When a computer program runs, it will do what it’s programmed to do, even if it’s programmed to be harmful. When you choose to run a program, you are making a decision to turn over control of your computer to that program. Once a program is running, it can do anything, up to the limits of what you yourself can do on the machine. It could monitor your keystrokes and send them to a web site. It could send rude emails to all your friends. It could install a virus. It could create a “back door” that lets someone remotely control your machine. Or it could just reformat your hard drive.
That’s why it’s important to never run, or even download, a program from an untrusted source – and by “source”, I mean the person who wrote it, not the person who gave it to you.
There’s an analogy between running a program and eating a sandwich. If a stranger walked up to you and handed you a sandwich, would you eat it? Probably not. How about if your best friend gave you a sandwich? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t – it depends on whether she made it or found it lying in the street. Apply the same critical thought to running a program.
Always make sure that a computer is physically protected in a way that’s consistent with its value – and remember that the value of a machine includes not only the value of the hardware itself, but the value of the data on it, and the value of the access to your network that a bad guy could gain.
If you travel with a laptop, it’s absolutely critical that you protect it. The same features that make laptops great to travel with – small size, lightweight, and so forth – also make them easy to steal. There are a variety of locks and alarms available for laptops, and some models let you remove the hard drive and carry it with you. But the only way you can know with 100% certainty that your data is safe and the hardware hasn’t been tampered with is to keep the laptop on your person at all times while traveling.
The purpose of having a logon process is to establish who you are. Once the operating system knows who you are, it can grant or deny requests for system resources appropriately. If a bad guy learns your password, he can log on as you. In fact, as far as the operating system is concerned, he is you. Whatever you can do on the system, he can do as well, because he’s you. Maybe he wants to read sensitive information you’ve stored on your computer, like your email. Maybe you have more privileges on the network than he does, and being you will let him do things he normally couldn’t. Or maybe he just wants to do something malicious and blame it on you. In any case, it’s worth protecting your credentials.
Always use a password, and choose a complex one. Don’t use your dog’s name, your anniversary date, or the name of the local football team. And don’t use the word “password”! Pick a password that has a mix of upper- and lower-case letters, number, punctuation marks, and so forth. Make it as long as possible. And change it often. Once you’ve picked a strong password, handle it appropriately. Don’t write it down. If you absolutely must write it down, at the very least keep it in a safe or a locked drawer – the first thing a bad guy who’s hunting for passwords will do is check for a yellow sticky note on the side of your screen, or in the top desk drawer.
Virus scanners work by comparing the data on your computer against a collection of virus “signatures”. Each signature is characteristic of a particular virus, and when the scanner finds data in a file, email, or elsewhere that matches the signature, it concludes that it’s found a virus. However, a virus scanner can only scan for the viruses it knows about. It’s vital that you keep your virus scanner’s signature file up to date, as new viruses are created every day.
Virtually every maker of anti-virus software provides a way to get free updated signature files from their web site. In fact, many have “push” services, in which they’ll send notification every time a new signature file is released. Use these services. Also, keep the virus scanning software updated too. Virus writers periodically develop new techniques that require that the scanners change how they do their work.
All human interaction involves exchanging data of some kind. If someone weaves enough of that data together, they can identify you. It doesn’t take long for someone to collect enough information to figure out who you are. If you crave absolute anonymity, your best bet is to live in a cave and shun all human contact.
The same thing is true of the Internet. If you visit a web site, the owner can find out who you are. After all, the ones and zeroes that make up the web session have be able to find their way to the right place, and that place is your computer. There are a lot of measures you can take to disguise the bits, and the more of them you use, the more thoroughly the bits will be disguised. For instance, you could use network address translation to mask your actual IP address, subscribe to an anonymizing service that launders the bits by relaying them from one end of the ether to the other, use a different ISP account for different purposes, surf certain sites only from public kiosks, and so on. All of these make it more difficult to determine who you are, but none of them make it impossible.
Does this mean that privacy on the web is a lost cause? Not at all. What it means is that the best way to protect your privacy on the Internet is the same as the way you protect your privacy in normal life – through your behavior. Read the privacy statements on the web sites you visit, and only do business with ones whose practices you agree with. If you’re worried about cookies, disable them. Most importantly, avoid indiscriminate web surfing – recognize that just as most cities have a bad side of town that’s best avoided, the Internet does too.
Technology can do amazing things. Recent years have seen the development of ever-cheaper and more powerful hardware, software that harnesses the hardware to open new vistas for computer users, as well as advancements in cryptography and other sciences. It’s tempting to believe that technology can deliver a risk-free world, if we just work hard enough. However, this is simply not realistic.
Perfect security requires a level of perfection that simply doesn’t exist, and in fact isn’t likely to ever exist. This is true for software as well as virtually all fields of human interest. Software development is an imperfect science, and all software has bugs. Some of them can be exploited to cause security breaches. That’s just a fact of life. But even if software could be made perfect, it wouldn’t solve the problem entirely. Most attacks involve, to one degree or another, some manipulation of human nature – this is usually referred to as social engineering. Raise the cost and difficulty of attacking security technology, and bad guys will respond by shifting their focus away from the technology and toward the human being at the console. It’s vital that you understand your role in maintaining solid security, or you could become the chink in your own systems’ armor.
The solution is to recognize two essential points. First, security consists of both technology and policy. It’s the combination of the technology and how it’s used that ultimately determines how secure your systems are. Second, security is journey, not a destination – it isn’t a problem that can be “solved” once and for all; it’s a constant series of moves and counter-moves between the good guys and the bad guys. The key is to ensure that you have good security awareness and exercise sound judgment. There are resources available to help you do this. The Microsoft Security web site, for instance, has hundreds of white papers, best practices guides, checklists and tools, and we’re developing more all the time. Combine great technology with sound judgment, and you’ll have rock-solid security.