Q: What Antivirus Does Google Recommend?
A: Google has no recommendations for antivirus. However, one of the reasons I love Google for email is they use VirusTotal to scan all email. VirusTotal uses the malware scan engines of many antivirus utilities to perform more than a dozen scans of a file at once. This helps to ensure that any email received through Google is free from known malware.
Q: What Are The Symptoms Of A Malware Attack?
A: This almost entirely depends on the skill level of the malware developer. Malware crafted by a skilled developer will be invisible to the end user, and invisible to the network administrator for quite some time. There have been malware attacks against governments (who presumably have fairly qualified IT & Network Administrators) that have been active for years before being discovered.
If a malware is created by a developer of less than high skills, then the malware most likely creates problems similar to any buggy software – performance degradation, crashes, screen artifacts, the computer operating incorrectly.
This is why it is important to:
A: Nobody ever said you had to remember passwords. You just need to create strong passwords.
A: By “creative ways” are we to assume trying something different, doing cybersecurity in a way that others are not doing?
That may be brilliant at an advertising agency or creating a new startup organization, but when the enterprise’s security and privacy are at risk, perhaps following best practices (as specified in the NIST 800–171, the ISO 27001 and 27002, as well as guidelines published by Apple, Google, Microsoft, et al.) is a wiser career choice.
A: How do you stop criminals?
A: There may be as many answers to this question as there are authors.
In my case, clients had been asking me to write books for my classes for over 20 years. I tried many times, but I couldn’t get past the first page. I was completely blocked and unable to get a foothold due to the enormity of the task in front of me.
But once someone gave me the most simple of advice, it all came together: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
A. A web browser will not display such a message. It is most likely that a compromised website you visited tossed that at you just like any other pop-up message or advertising. It is also possible that your browser has been compromised, with a plug-in or other item introduced to create these pop-ups.
I’ll bet there was a phone number to call for assistance, or a button to click to purchase a solution to this “problem”.
So, let’s verify all is in good shape, and we can write this off to a rogue web page:
All should be rainbows and unicorns!
A: I’m not a physiological psychologist or neuroscientist, so I can’t answer directly, but I’ll offer another question: WHY do some people say words without thinking about what they are saying?
A: This really depends on if you want to be a decent, compassionate human being, or something a few steps below a jerk.
A:
A: The DSL or Cable router that comes with your service will have a firewall. To access and configure, you will need the administrator username and password. This is often on a label attached to the unit, along with the URL to directly access the device.
However, the security of these firewall is a point of debate. The devices are very inexpensive, in wide use, with known vulnerabilities and hacks.
Although you can purchase a firewall all by itself, usually the better option is to install a 3rd-party quality router with firewall. There are at least a dozen well-known brands. Stay away from “consumer-class” devices, and go with “business-grade”. It won’t cost much more, but the quality difference can be significant.
I’m partial to the router made by OpenMesh – the G200. Even better when paired with their A62 Wireless Access Point.
You will still need your DSL or Cable router to connect you to the Internet. To get better performance, call your broadband provider, ask them to change it from Router to Bridge mode after you have your 3rd-party router in place.
A: Presidential?
A: Yes.
But never allow them to use electricity. That is the devil’s work.
A: My bet is that any group that has as a friend someone who would post such a question can be easily hacked.
But still, you shouldn’t do so.
If you have to ask why, you’ll never understand the answer.
A: If you mean how does one verify that a gmail account belongs to who it claims… no method is available that is reasonably accurate.
A: This is very much like asking is it possible for a virus to wipe out all of humanity on the planet.
Even Ebola doesn’t have a 100% kill rate.
In the case of a computer virus, the virus would need to be compatible to run on 100+ different operating systems, able to read and write to many different storage device formats, and act fast enough so that it is able to attack worldwide so quickly no defense mechanism could be put in place (probably faster than 24 hours). It would also need to impact backups of backups of backups. Of which, most are read only – so cannot be erased, encrypted, or changed.
I’m sure there are at least a dozen other major hurdles it would have to overcome.
Overcoming one or two of these issues is easily doable. Overcoming all of them? It is not within the reach of technology as we know it today.
A: It is almost inconceivable that the sound you are hearing has any association with possible monitoring of your phone. The reasons is there isn’t any reason for a penetration device or process to introduce noice on the line.
A: Every device that is able to access either ethernet or wi-fi has a unique MAC (Media Access Control) address. Although the MAC address is hard-coded into the network chip, it can be spoofed.
A: First and foremost is an antivirus (anti-malware) is limited to protecting against only malware. Malware is just a minor player in the cybersecurity arena.
They are limited to protecting only against the malware they have been designed to recognize. Even the very best protect against perhaps 99.9% of known malware. Depending on whose numbers you believe, there may be more than 100,000,000 malware in the wild. That leaves at least 10,000 known malware even the very best don’t protect against.
As to how many unknown malware are in the wild? Nobody knows.
And then when they come up against malware they know about, they are limited in how well they eliminate the threat, and limited in saving any damaged data – or preventing data from being harvested.
A solution that works more reliably than antivirus is application whitelisting – specifying which applications may run. Then, should malicious code find its way into your device and attempt to run, it is automatically blocked as unauthorized.
Once the malware issue is dealt with, then you can turn your attention to the other security and privacy issues your device faces; email hacking, instant message hacking, phone call monitoring, man in the middle attacks (notice women rarely get in the middle of this) (sorry, it had to be said and I was just standing around), social media (it’s own kind of malware), storage device encryption, Multi-Factor Authentication, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning, etc.
A: It’s not so much the users/month, but the maximum number of concurrent users, and the bandwidth of your internet connection that are limiting factors. Your available budget is also a factor.
For example, let’s say your internet bandwidth is 100Mb/s. If you have 100 concurrent users, that is 100Mb/s divided by 100 users, or 1Mb/s/user. That is barely adequate to maintain a connection.
So the first challenge is to have adequate internet bandwidth, based on the maximum number of concurrent connections, and how much minimum bandwidth you wish to allocate per connection. A good number to start with is 5Mb/s. This will allow a stable connection and tolerable browsing speed.
The next challenge is the maximum number of users connected to an access point. Consumer-level access points can typically manage from 10-50 concurrent connections. At some point, they will refuse any additional connections. Professional/Enterprise-level devices will be able to manage up to 250 concurrent connections.
However, even if you purchase a high-end unit capable of 250 concurrent connections, if the access-point is capable of a maximum of 1,300Mb/s throughput, that is 1,300/250 or 5.2Mb/s per connection. And that 1,300Mb/s rate is only available when the connected device is within a few feet. As the distance between the access point and the connected device increases, the available connection speed drops quickly. At an average distance of 100′, the average connection speed may drop to 1Mb/s.
The solution used for large conference halls, sports stadiums, (even Apple Stores) is to have many access points spread around the area, all connected via ethernet to a centralized router, each using the same SSID (Wi-Fi network name), operating as a wired mesh network. Have an adequate number of access points so that none are ever pushed near 50% capacity.
As an example, An Apple Store may have 20-30 Wi-Fi channels running on high-end Cisco Access Points to cover just one store.
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