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Securing your Thumb Drive
Thumb drives also known as
USB drives are popular for storing and transporting files from one
computer to another. Since these devices are small, inexpensive and
extremely portable an attacker can use your USB device to attack your
company network.
Many people take precautions to secure their Facebook and other social
media accounts but they forget to take security precautions for their
removable devices. However, protecting these handy devices for data
security is something, about which most of us aren�t familiar with Isn�t
it?. We tend to put all our personal data and valuable company details
into a thumb drive and if goes into wrong hands, can result into loss
and misuse of your own personal data. There have been many such
incidents that have been reported to us which could have been avoided by
a simple security precaution.

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The very first thing you
should do is to buy a removable media from a recognized company. If you
buy thumb drives from the pavement which is much cheaper than the
regular price you may get malware�s also. The next thing you should do
is write protecting your pen drive; using the write protector switch of
your USB drive, if it has one, you can make it read only. However, if
the write protector switch is missing, you can use a write protector
software to make your USB non writable. This technique can save your
drive from being infected by viruses, when plugged into a computer
system. .Create An Encrypted Partition inside your USB device.
Encryption of USB drives is an efficient way to prevent third parties
from accessing your sensitive data, even if they have physical access to
your drive. The other main thing that you need to do is to password
Protection: Although, there are different techniques to password protect
a USB drives, the most common way is to simply set a password for your
drive. This means every time you access your drive, it asks for the
password first. You can also use online software�s for such purpose.
Always remember to keep personal and business USB drives separate. Do
not use personal USB drives on computers owned by your organization, and
does not plug USB drives containing corporate information into your
personal computer.
Never plug an unknown USB drive into your computer unless you are
absolutely sure of what you are doing and if you ever found a USB drive
give it to the appropriate authorities and don�t try to plug it to your
personnel computer.
Remember to disable Autorun in your computer. The Autorun feature causes
removable media such as CDs, DVDs, and USB drives to open automatically
when they are inserted into a drive. By disabling Autorun, you can
prevent malicious code on an infected USB drive from opening
automatically. Microsoft has provided a wizard to disable Autorun which
can be easily found in their website.
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Charith Shalitha De
Alwis
Charith is an
undergraduate of of the University of Colombo School of Computing
who is currently following Bachelor of Computer Science(CS)
Currently he is working as Intern - Information Security Engineer
at Sri Lanka CERT|CC. |
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WHEN NASA MOVES ITS WEBSITES TO THE
CLOUD, EVERYONE WATCHES |
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A project to move NASA websites and applications to the
cloud has successfully migrated over 1 million pieces of
content, completing its first phase, managers announced.. |
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How to get a job in computer security |
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.I am asked
probably twice a week to help somebody get a job in the
security profession. |
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Unfortunately, I can�t help that many people individually,
but perhaps this article will allow me to help many people
all at once.. |
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Social Engineering: The
Basics |
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You've got all the bells and
whistles when it comes to network firewalls and your
building's security has a state-of-the-art access system.
You've invested in the technology. But a social engineering
attack could bypass all those defenses.. |
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ARMY EYES 4G CELLULAR TECH
FOR COMBAT COMMUNICATIONS |
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The Army�s communications
research center wants to evaluate the use of commercial,
broadband cellular technology for battlefield
communications, a move that could herald the beginning of
the end for a similar system the Defense Department has
struggled to develop and deploy since 1997... |
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Going Hybrid |
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Many agencies could be saving money by making better use of
the cloud, but what about all of the data and functions that
simply can't go virtual? |
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SORRY, APPLE: HONG KONG WAY AHEAD WITH
MOBILE PAYMENTS |
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I experienced the mobile payment future last year on a
10-day trip to Hong Kong � but it was with the Octopus Card
used to access the city's subway and rail system, |
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Month in Brief
Facebook Incidents
Reported to Sri Lanka CERT|CC in
August 2014
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Statistics - Sri Lanka CERT|CC
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