Computer and Internet Security Issues that you Should Know

Using your computer and a reliable Internet connection can be the best combination for an ideal business opportunity. You don’t need raise too much capital for your business venture. With just a reliable Internet connection and computer system (which, because of wide availability and usage, become cheaper), you will be able to start your business right away and earn hundreds to thousands of dollars every month, depending on the online business opportunity that you would prefer.

However, you must be aware of the miscalculations that you can commit along your online business venture, especially when you forget to prioritize the protection of your computer system from unauthorized use and data theft. Contrary to the popular belief that a small-size Internet business will make them safe from data hackers and online intruders, there is also a great risk and danger involved once you neglect to protect your computer system, especially the hacking and computer destruction activities that are increasing significantly as the Internet evolves over the years. Most small-time Internet entrepreneurs are blinded by the fact that they are not exempted from these notorious data thieves, which is not true nowadays.

According to a research conducted by AMI-Partners, almost 50 percent of small and medium-sized online businesses failed to execute even the most basic security protection, which includes the installation of anti-spyware and anti-virus programs to their computer systems. This is one of the main reasons why the Mydoom worm triumphed, affecting one out of three small and medium-sized online businesses compared to one out of six large Internet companies. This was also discovered by the ISA or the Internet Security Alliance, a non-profit organization that handles information security issues. In other words, we can conclude that even small online businesses are more vulnerable to online threats of data theft and electronic sabotage.

In fact, every small online business owner must give data and network protection more attention due to the sophistication of data thieves. These thieves have now one of the advanced software programs and hardware necessary to break into the security measures implemented by data mangers. It would be a great waste of time and financial resources if your computer is left unguarded against these advanced data thieves and online hackers. You are on the verge of losing everything—including your computer, which is also a valuable investment.

Thus, it is important that you should consider data security and encryption as one of your top priorities. Keep in mind that your computer system is always vulnerable to this kind of attacks, even if you are just starting up. In fact, big businesses have more chances to recover compared to small business since big business have necessary funds available to recover from mishap. On the other hand, your small business has meager funds to start with your business—and an attack will be catastrophic for your small business.

There are hundreds of software providers that came up with latest solutions to guarantee the safety of your computer system. In addition, there are also Internet security services to guarantee protection of your online data against Internet hackers. By incorporating high level of encryption technology, hackers will have a hard time intercepting the data being stored in your computer system or while it is transmitted to a certain network of computer systems.

Always explore your options. Prioritize what is important and avoid getting caught by a catastrophic incident that will shut down your small business at an instant.

The New Age Of Communications For Businesses And Individuals

The new way for individuals and businesses to conduct phone conversations and conference calls is with Voip communications. The idea of finding a company that allows you to communicate over the internet has allowed many people to conduct business meetings and to keep in touch with family and friends. You no longer need a landline with a local phone company to talk around the world. When you add the video option to the package, you can conduct conference calls with business partners and associates as well as friends and family while seeing the person or persons you are talking too. This feature is for both phone and computers. Vonage has gained popularity with people looking for the Voip option. You have a box that that hooks up to your phone line and it has a broadband connection. With this company, you can have unlimited international and local calls for a set amount a month. Many other companies offer the service as well, with different plans and options. The Voice over IP system helps people who need to work at home or you have a need for a lower phone bill other than what their local phone company has to offer. The only drawback to having the Voip phone system is that you also have to sign up for a 911 service. Since you have the ability to select an area code other than the one you reside in, this can cause problems if you have to use the system. Many people do not realize this and have encountered problems. You are also going to pay an additional charge for the 911 service. This is a great way to save money if you already have a broadband connection. There are other options to the Voip telephony system as well. One thing to keep in mind about using the Voip calling system is that depending on the type of service you have, you may need a different phone to use with the new phone system, it will have a USB plug, but they are relatively cheap. This is the only downfall to the Voip telephony because if you lose power you will lose your phone service. Video conferencing is also hitting the top of the hot computer topics list because of the convenience and affordability that it offers. You can do this via computer or through a Voip line. You will more than likely need a software program for the computer, but this also depends on the system, you have to use. If you use the computer software, you can hook up every computer in your business that is connected to the network. This is becoming more popular because employees can remain at their desks and still participate in conferencing meetings. This is the hottest thing since the computer or the internet. Businesses everywhere are switching to this type of communication within the company as well as outside the company communications. Because of this communication, businesses and individuals have more options for communicating rather than a landline with a local phone company or a cell phone. Look for more upgrades in this type of technology as more and more people start to rely on this as a sole means of communication in the very near future.

The Results Of A Hacker Finding Your Personal Information

Everyone has heard of the latest scandal regarding the Monster.com site being hacked and vital information for over one million people being stolen. Now what would a hacker want with the information some would wonder? The though behind a hackers motives in most cases, is to just be able to hack the site that says it is “hack proof”. In other cases involving fraud, it is to obtain your personal information and either uses it for spamming or to sell it to scam artists. In any case, a site that is hacked has legal responsibilities one would think. The latest Monster.com scare is more than likely just the theft of work history and name along with references. Now if the information also included Social Security information or annual salary requirements as well as cell phone numbers and credit card or bank information, people are going to have major problems. This type of activity happens all the time, but we only hear about the big news companies such as Monster.com or others in the spotlight. Now if a pet product site that is just starting out and is not a well-known name, they are not going to divulge that information and if they do, it will not make the news headlines. Everyone uses the Internet for one reason or another and if you are like most people, you may shop, look for work, play games or just browse. In any cases, you need to be careful how you supply your information. A secure site to display your information needs to contain encryption to protect your information if it is for buying and gaming as well. Anytime you give out personal information about yourself, you want to know your information is protected. With the latest scare with Monster.com, people have to wonder, what will they do with that information? As hackers become more devious in their endeavor to hack into websites and steal the information, more IT technicians will work harder to make the sites and products to secure the sites even better. All the scares that we encounter with our Internet experiences are just another form of criminal activity, unfortunately, it can cause problems for the entire world. Protecting yourself and your computer from a hack attack is top priority and every day, businesses are upgrading their systems and infrastructures to protect vital information. The best way to protect yourself some had said is, never give out personal information. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. If you want to shop, look for work, do some gaming or sign up for important newsletters and promotions, you have to supply the pertinent information. Therefore, using a little caution as to what sites you use is great, but as it was proved with Monster, even the best of sites can endure problems. This however, is no reason to stop using the Internet. You just need to be aware of the treat and use good judgment when you visit a website. Some day we will see a system to track and stop hackers from stealing vital information. Companies who make the software and other software for security measures work hard every day to find new ways to stop a hacker. As the hacker gains more strength, software developers gain more security knowledge to stop them in their tracks.

Laptops Coming With 1.2TB Hard Drives

Some companies have successfully shown that it is completely feasible to have hard drives of 1.2 Terabytes in the very near future. It is not a very well kept secret that the news of laptops coming with 1.2 TB hard drives is being reported in many magazines and online zines. This is big news for those people who find that they want more memory and speed from their laptop computers. This will allow them to run many higher end programs and memory-heavy applications in a much better way. The laptops coming with 1.2 TB hard drives will have many more features and power-saving applications than the laptop computers that people are used to using. While many people use their home computer systems exclusively for their work and entertainment, there are many more that use laptop computers at both work and at home, completely replacing their home personal computer as their main system. The new laptops coming with 1.2 TB hard drives will have many more applications for computer users who like to use their systems for entertainment. The ability of laptops to play and store movie files easily on the hard drives is going to be even more popular with the laptops coming with 1.2 TB hard drives. For individual computer users this will mean that the amount of memory and processing power will be much better and faster than what they have in their laptops now. The goal of these companies is to produce a hard drive system that can be implemented in the same space as the existing hard drives but offer much higher levels of processing speed and storage capacity. The laptops coming with 1.2 TB hard drives will make it much easier for laptop users to run the same sort of memory-hungry applications as computers at home and at the office. Being able to work on large computer applications at home on the laptop computer is a big bonus for many people who do not want to be chained to one area in their homes. The ability of the laptop computer to allow them to work anywhere is a very popular aspect to their use. Being able to use these higher-powered laptops in situations where they once simply did not cope well with applications is one of the major selling points for businesses looking to upgrade their laptops. The ability of their employees to be able to have access to the same sort of allocations while on the road or away from the office is a very attractive aspect of this new announcement. Being able to have higher capacity hard drives in the same space and weight as the older laptops will improve many aspects of business program applications. Some businesses that specialize in creating complex business programs can now use the ability of laptops to have larger hard drives as the backbone of their target audience. The applications can be as simple as spreadsheet programs or as complex as computer business forecasting model programs. The larger capacity of the hard drive will mean that the laptop will not slow its processing times down at all because of too much data stored in the hard drive. It will take a long time to fill up a 1.2 Terabyte hard drive. Laptops have come down a lot in price over the past few years and more people have started using them, both in the office and on the road. The largest change to the demographic of the laptop, however, is that more people have started using their laptop computer as a replacement for their home computer. When once, laptops were only used for portability, they now have become so powerful that they can do everything that home computers can – and more. The laptops of today have much larger screens than they once did, which was always something that laptop users complained about in relation to the larger screens on their home computers. With larger screens, faster processors and now the prediction of much larger hard drives on the horizon, it will not be long before laptop computers push many home based computer systems off the desk at home.

How Can You Tell If Your Computer Is Bot Infected

A bot is an important thing that a computer uses when on the Internet. A bot is an application that works to run automated activities for maintenance and protection when the user is on the Internet. There are some instances of where bots can be dangerous. So, how can you tell if your computer is bot infected? You can find out when you follow the tips mentioned here. How can you tell if your computer is bot infected? You can find out by seeing if your Internet activities have been involuntarily restricted. There are various different types of bots that can be dangerous to a computer. Some bots will cause denial of service attacks to take place. This is where the user who is trying to get it to work cannot access a resource that is on a computer. It will be impossible for you to access certain websites on the Internet. This is one of the main ways of how can you tell if you computer is bot infected. How can you tell if your computer is bot infected? You can tell if there is a good amount of computer viruses that are found on your computer during a virus scan. Even though a typical antivirus program will update itself often and do automatic scanning and protection, there can be instances where new viruses can sneak onto your computer that are not listed in the definitions that your computer program has. Many malicious bots will have these new viruses on them, so you should especially watch out for these when you are online. One of the best things to do to find out how can you tell if your computer is bot infected is by checking to see how much spam you are getting in your email account. Bots will be especially effective in creating spam that can be sent to infected computers. This can even affect email servers that have strong spam filters. The reason why these filters will be avoided when bots send spam is that in some cases multiple bots on multiple systems can work together to send different pieces of spam. This takes place through a botnet that can build up when one bot infects a computer and it spreads to other computers. One of the other things that can be used to help you tell if your computer is bot infected is if you live in an area that is near a bot control server. Bots have become a global problem in many countries that have control servers that send bots to other innocent computers. The United States has most of these servers, particularly in the Washington D.C. and Chicago areas. Atlantic Canada, Stockholm and Seoul also have large servers. These are areas that have the highest concern levels. Are there any products that can help you with understanding about bot infections and that tell you how can you tell if your computer is bot infected? Of course there are. You can check to make sure that your firewall and antivirus programs are fully updated and contain the latest patches. After you update the program, you can run a scan to see if your computer is bot infected. Prevention is an even more important thing to use though. Having a firewall program is helpful. Protecting personal information that you may be sending online should be used too, as you should only give it to legitimate sites that are trusted. Do not forget to avoid spam emails that may sound like a good deal. This is one of the main ways of how bots can spread onto a computer, and it can indeed be prevented. How can you tell if your computer is bot infected? You can tell by looking into the viruses and spam that you have in your computer. Making sure your computer is protected can help you to avoid them so that only good bots that help with computer processes will be on your computer.

Portable Media Inputs For Computers

Portable media is one of the most popular things that can be used. Whether it is for an MP3 player, a digital camera or something that is just used to transport files around, portable media can be used to easily transfer information from one computer to another. There are numerous portable media inputs to look into. The most popular of the portable media inputs for computers is the USB input. The Universal Serial Bus input is used to improve plug and play compatibility so that devices can be easily connected to a computer without having to restart the computer or install additional software. Flash drives are especially popular among USB inputs, but various other programs and hardware will use this. This includes MP3 players that use USB connections to connect the player to the computer or portable video players that work in the same way. Hardware for the computers have been using USB inputs too, including computer speakers, monitors and printers. An SD card is another of the portable media inputs for computers. Short for Secure Digital, this is a popular method of data storage for all different types of digital media. This includes digital cameras, GPS devices and PDA computers. Many of the top cards can hold multiple gigabytes of information. SD cards are becoming popular in these devices and more computers have built in SD card readers. SDHC cards, which are Secure Digital High Capacity cards, are also popular and can be read on these computers. These cards are known for using the FAT32 file system and can handle more than ten gigabytes of data. Most computers will have memory stick compatibility. This is one of the most commonly used portable media inputs for computers because it can be easily transported and can carry large amounts of data. This media input can write around two megabytes of information per second and can transfer more megabytes per second. This is one of the portable media inputs for computers that is continually evolving. Whereas an original stick would be able to handle sixteen megabytes of data, a Memory Stick PRO can handle more than a gigabyte of information and the Memory Stick Micro, which is smaller in size but can fit into a typical memory stick input, can theoretically fit up to thirty two gigabytes of data. CompactFlash is another of the portable media inputs for computers. This is an input that is used especially with digital cameras. Many computers today will have built in inputs for CompactFlash cards. Some of these cards will be able to handle data with sizes as great as that of four gigabytes. Professional film development stores that have machines that can read CompactFlash cards can even handle this type of portable media. Because of the ease of reading the data on the card, it is affordable to print pictures from a CompactFlash input at one of these stores. The last of the portable media inputs for computers is the SmartMedia card. This is a flash memory card made by Toshiba that is popular among digital cameras. Several considerations should be used with this input though. In addition, some devices will only be able to handle five-volt cards and not 3.3-volt cards. Some readers can handle cards of either voltage, and this is the case for most computers that have these portable media inputs for the SmartMedia card. Portable media is popular in that it is easier to store and move data between computers. These five portable media inputs for computers are among the ones that can be found on a typical computer system. Not only will these portable media inputs for computers read the data that is stored on cards and other devices, but in many cases they can be used to connect equipment that uses these cards and devices with ease.

What To Look For In A Computer Monitor

A computer monitor is important for any computer because it is what brings the world of computers to people visually. There are all sorts of different things to use for a computer monitor. Among the things to look for in a computer monitor, include the resolution of the monitor, its size, the type of display and the refresh quality of the monitor. The size of the pixels in the monitor should also be considered when you are considering what to look for in a computer monitor. The first thing to look for in a computer monitor is the resolution quality of the monitor. The resolution is based on the number of pixels that are in the monitor screen. When there are more pixels in the monitor the resolution will be better. For instance, a monitor with a resolution of 1600x1280 is better than a 1280x1024 monitor. The horizontal number of pixels is listed first followed by the vertical number. The next thing to look for in a computer monitor is the size of the monitor. The size of the monitor will refer to how big the screen is from a diagonal measurement. Sixteen-inch monitors are popular but there are other sizes available at typical stores that sell computer monitors. When looking for the monitor that has the right screen size the ability of the user to read what is on the monitor should be greatly considered. The display type that is used in a monitor is similar to what is used with a television set. Cathode ray tubes are used in larger monitors that have picture tubes working to display images. Liquid crystal display monitors are becoming more popular. This uses a liquid film to display images and is incredibly popular because of the thinner size of the monitor. It should be noted that the display type is going to make an impact on the colors in the monitor. A cathode ray tube monitor will be easily visible from multiple angles and will do a better job with displaying images. However, a liquid crystal display monitor will be able to bring out higher quality resolution for images. Technology for this is improving though. In fact, it is easier to place on a typical desk because of the smaller width of the monitor. The refresh quality of the monitor is another thing to think about when looking for a computer monitor. This refers to the highest number of vertical scans that a monitor can produce. A typical monitor will have a range between seventy and two hundred vertical scans per second. When the monitor has a higher number of vertical scans per second that means that monitor will be able to refresh what is on it at a faster rate. There will be less flickering when there are more vertical scans in a second. While the number of pixels in the monitor is one of the things to think about when you consider what to look for in a computer monitor, the size of those individual pixels should be considered also. Each pixel will have a size in a specific amount of millimeters. The size will determine the dot pitch in the monitor. A typical dot pitch for a quality monitor will be .25. This means that the pixel will be especially small and less than a millimeter in size. Overall, when the dot pitch is smaller the monitor will be better. This means that greater levels of resolution can be created on smaller monitors. That is what to look for in a computer monitor. The resolution, size, refresh quality, display and the pixel size should all be considered when looking into buying a computer monitor. Not all computer monitors will be the same, so it is important to look into all of these aspects so that it will be easier to find a monitor that is right for one’s individual needs.