Thank
you, everyone, for coming out to today’s talk on responsible computer usage. My
goal is to teach you some basic procedures that can help you to keep your
personal data and information safe. First, I’ll talk about how to keep your
computer itself safe and secure, and then I’ll cover a few good practices you
can adopt when making passwords.
First
of all, I’d like to put to rest a flawed notion that many people have. I’ve heard
countless people try and tell me that only machines that run Microsoft Windows
get computer viruses, but that’s not true. Any type of computer can get a
virus, even a Macintosh or a machine that runs an advanced operating system
like Linux.
No
matter what kind of machine you have, there are two ways viruses can get on
your computer. The first way is using some sort of external media like a USB
thumb drive, or a DVD or an external hard drive…anything that someone plugs
into your computer. The other way is by downloading software, or any file
really, from the Internet, or visiting a website that’s got malware on it.
There’s
one question I ask myself whenever I’m getting data from somebody or looking to
download something from a website: “Do I trust this person?” And I don’t mean
“trust” in terms of them wanting to do something malicious to you…the person
could just not be very computer savvy and might have viruses on their machine
that could put yours at risk.
Sometimes
there’s no avoiding the situation, though…and that’s why every user, even the
most careful among us, should install certain types of software to stay
protected. The most important software you can have on your computer is an
antivirus program. This will inform you if any of the files on your computer,
or even files you’re attempting to download, are infected with a virus. If a
virus is found, the software quarantines it just like a hospital would
quarantine a sick person…to prevent the virus from spreading.
Another
piece of software that comes in handy is an anti-malware program. Whereas
computer viruses are designed to physically destroy your hardware or erase your
data, malware is designed to steal personal information. Malware programs can
log your keystrokes, read your passwords, and send copies of your personal data
to perfect strangers.
I also
wanted to talk a little about how to protect your information while online. The
most often overlooked part of online security is a strong password? Guess what
the three most common passwords are? “123456,” “12345,” and the word
“password.” Those three passwords alone, according to estimates, comprise about
1 in 40 of all passwords. That means, going by the law of averages, at least
one of you has a password that I just named. If someone’s going to try to hack
into your email account or personal data, they are certainly going to start
with the most common passwords. If you have a password that is a word which
appears in the dictionary, you can easily be hacked. Or if the password is a
piece of public personal information, like your phone number, birthdate, or
spouse’s name. Did you realize that hackers can run thousands, even millions of
password attempts a second in order to break into your accounts?
Apart from not using the sorts of passwords I’ve just described, there are
certain guidelines you can follow to make sure your password is next to
impossible to be guessed by hackers. First of all, make your password long. Ten
characters is a good minimum length. Secondly, make sure you use lowercase
letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and even symbols if they’re allowed. Not
to get too much into math, but let’s say you have a 10-character password
comprised of upper- and lowercase letters and numbers. That’s 62 characters you
have to choose from, and if your password is 10 characters long, that means you
have 62 to the 10th power potential password combinations. That’s
more than 800 quadrillion – an 8 with 17 zeros following it. A hackers will
never be able to randomly guess your password…unless you write it down
somewhere and they find it. Never write down your password. Commit it to memory
as soon as possible.
All
right…now I’ll talk about some popular software programs you can use to protect
your computer against threats.