Like it or not, because of years of training and experience, I am considered a "highly skilled generalist in information security" . I belong to a number of professional organizations, and when possible attend what I consider relevant training, either information system audit classes, or info-sec training. (And yes, in my professional life I have an alphabet soup behind my name.) So when family or friends ask what are some good things to do, I usually rattle off the essentials, anti-virus, personal firewall, spy-ware detection- and maintaining your computer by doing or scheduling the maintenance tasks it needs to perform well. If you have a wireless router/access point at home, for goodness sakes enable encryption, and use the WPA2 settings-WEP is an old standard and can be pretty easily cracked; change the default network name, and the administrator password. One of the first things I do on some assignments is sit in the parking lot of the place that hired me, and use some freely available tools to scan for wireless connections. Netstumbler will tell me if the network is encrypted or not, and by the name of the network, I usually can tell if it was just plugged in and turned on or if the owner did some of the things I suggest above- i mean when I see an unsecured network names Linksys, odds are i can get in. Recently a large store hired me, and in doing this I found their electronics department had set up a wireless network to demo wireless equipment, only they connected it to the intranet of the store chain, which allowed me access to their corporate network-OOPS!
So this morning I went to see what was new at some sites I use for their tools, so i googled audit my PC, and at the site found a new java based speed test from broadband. This is critical for me to work from home, to be able to quickly download materials from/for work.
Back story- I fought with my phone company for years to get dsl- in the rural suburban area I am in they have a state sanctioned monopoly on phone service that dates back to the olden days when the state had to force companies to provide service to rural areas and guaranteed no competition to mitigate the cost to the company. Which was OK when where i live was farm country-but since I moved here 14 years ago, has grown from 12,000 to 138,000 people due to the housing boom!
So back to where we were- I did the newest speed test; from 2 years ago to now my connectivity speeds are about 3 times faster, the current speeds about 2,890 kbps for download and 784 kbps upload. (kbps means kilobytes per second); I also used the IP address discovery tool, and find that the ip address they say is my PC is(thankfully) the server for my internet provider not my actual pc ip address.
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