Edgewood RCS497 Reflective Question - 3

How did your specific experiences inform you in your practice of securely using technology for communication?

Having been in the IT industry since the introduction of Windows 95 (yes I was one of those guys who answered the phones for Microsoft) I have had the advantage of knowing many of the pitfalls with using communication over the internet.  It was all pretty new to me before that.

My first computer was an OS/2 IBM 386 with a whopping 2 megs of memory, and an 80 meg hard drive.  And it had a modem!  How cool was that to go on a bulletin board and leave or pick up a message from a friend.  AND – you could download things, assuming you have several hours to tie up your phone line for a very poor graphic.  I was introduced to this by a friend of mine who worked with me.  I had no idea of issues with viruses or people trying to scam you.  I spent little time on bulletin boards, other than posing fun messages. 

Getting on board with a one month intense training course before manning the phones, security and viruses were definitely stressed.  It became even greater over the year I spent on phones.  As Windows 95 and Internet explorer allowed for ease of access to the internet, more and more people began to run into issues with viruses.  Being careful of where one browsed, and what a person chose to download now became very important.  Also scam emails and issues with Trojans became security problems.  I quickly became an expert on what to watch out for, and how to fix issues created by the lack of security and proper protection.

As I upgraded my computer, I also made sure to protect myself from viruses by having a good Anti-Virus program.  But as virus were constantly being written, one was not always safe from new attacks.  As Malware raised its ugly head, there were new concerns about security and protection.  Several times I personally had to research techniques to remove ugly viruses or malware.  Those were some long nights.  But the longest night I spent was during the LOVE BUG virus attack while I was working for the Wisconsin Legislature.  I reverse engineered the  VBscript as a quick fix till MacAfee could come out with a DAT file upgrade.  We changed our security settings for our Exchange mail server to not allow any kind of scripting to be passed along. 

Firewalls were not a big issue with dial up because of the speed and limited time that I was connected to the internet.  However as the Operating Systems continued to upgrade, and high speed internet became affordable, having a good firewall became very necessary.  On all of the networks that I had been involved with.  But the level of lock down quickly became that of lock everything down, and only open what you absolutely had to.  Practices of accepting emails, and downloads were addressed by sending out regular safety reminders to all employees, Senate and legislature members. 

Security is constantly being challenged.  Large organizations and businesses are big targets that hackers love to try and access.  But now that high speed access 24/7 is readily available for home users, they too are under attack for identity theft.  I have changed my firewall settings on my cable router and on all of our local computers in our home.  Wireless settings also have been locked down, setting the router to only accept certain MAC addresses.  Hackers and creators of Virus\Malware are constantly changing and advancing their attracts.  Just looking at the issues SONY has had because of P.O.ing off the PS3 community shows how determined these guys are.  Vigilance and awareness are the only tools for real protection.  Information from work, tech magazines, and online security briefs are the tools I use to keep informed and up to date.