Typically when you hear the word “hacker” it you get the idea of someone who, with evil intent, searches for ways to mine your personal/company data and destroy or replace data.

However, an ethical hacker or white hat hacker is someone who practices the so called Ethical Hacking and could use his abilities to harm your business, but he makes the choice to help uncover security failings in your system and then help you to find ways to protect your company from other hackers.

Ethical Hacking and Ethical Hackers

Ethical hackers are, in this way, helpful to many companies and they can protect their online business by closing the backdoor entrance to -would be- hackers and company data can be safeguarded. Customers often experience an even greater level of trust and security in the online business resulting in improved performance in online sales and uptime.

Maybe this explains why so many of the larger online businesses seem to have less downtime and experience fewer problems. Most hackers know they will have a harder time getting into these systems than smaller companies that may not have the resources to investigate every possible security leak.

Therefore, it is important for any online business to make sure they take proper measures by installing anti-virus protection, spyware removal tools and firewall protection. This should not be a debated standpoint. Your customers deserve the safety that only you can provide through appropriate protective measures.

Hackers usually do not target a specific site since much as they do is to create software that looks to find an entrance to online business websites data and then they determine what can be found inside those sites they can infiltrate.

Some hackers even say they mean no harm; they simply are curious and have found new ways of finding out information. Too often this is information they should not have access to. Why do they do it then? Well, because they can.

Some hackers consider what they do is a mean of making the online environment safer for individuals and businesses. If they can disable an online store or take over a website they figure this proves what they have been saying all along: sites are not as safe online as some think.

It is fair to say that through hacker’s activity, we often have learned better ways to secure websites in general, and even more importantly, they have made clear that online business must remain vigilant in the safeguard of their company data.

Things have changed in an online sales environment and applying strong security measures to your site is not only in your best interest, but also the interest of your customers who place their trust in your ability to safeguard their data.

If an online company is large enough they might consider the ethical hacking services of a ethical hacker.

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Firewall Definition

A firewall is a computer software or a hardware device acting as a gatekeeper designed to keep our computers safe from hackers, or anyone wanting to have a look in our computers. It acts by monitoring all internet traffic incoming and outgoing of our computers.

They not only control the passage of this traffic but inspects it, making sure it is safe and do not contain viruses, spyware, or other malicious software.

Firewalls control internet traffic in two ways: Packet Filtering and Stateful Inspection.

Packet Filtering

A Packet is a chunk of data and it contains the IP address of the computer where data comes from and a destination address.

What’s an IP Address?

It is an identifier for your computer. The format of an IP address is a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. If the Firewall recognizes the Packet and its IP Address, or its Internet Protocol Address, it allows the Packet to pass.

The Stateful Inspection

The Stateful Inspection method looks at some data in the Packet and compares key chunks of data to a large area that contains known, trusted information, to see if it is safe or if your computer is expecting the data. It allows safe passage of data if all seems well. The Stateful Inspection method is preferred since it checks the data that have passed through your computer before.

Hardware Firewalls

Hardware Firewalls are devices that are designed to run software Firewalls. What is the advantage of using this hardware device? One big advantage of having a Hardware Firewall is that the computer doesn’t have to do any work. The hardware running the software does all the work, thereby leaving the CPU in the computer free to undertake the other tasks. As the the CPU, or Central Processing Unit is released from performing firewall tasks, it is able to run at its best performance.

Common Threats to Your Computer

Hackers use many creative ways to access or abuse your computer when it’s not protected. This can range from being able to view or access your files to actually running programs on your computer. These programs take the different forms known as trojans, spyware, virus, etc.

Viruses

A virus is one of the most well known threats. A Virus is a small file which reproduces itself on other computers. They can be harmless or as malign to be able to wiping your hard drive. Firewalls may not protect you from all viruses. So, it would be worth your while to invest in good anti virus software as added protection.

Nowadays there are many options available for firewall protection. Most of them are easy to install, they are affordable and, in many cases, firewall software is offered together with antivirus protection. You can test your firewall by going online and visiting a security site. Go to www.grc.com and give their free Shields Up security test a try. If the firewall passes, you will have the comfort of knowing your PC will have that added protection from someone stealing your credit card information or any valuable information. If you have not invested in a firewall, don’t wait to give one a try. Your critical files, programs and personal information will be much safer.

Check Our Recommended Software To Keep Your Computer Safe

Are you the parent of a child or a teenager who uses the internet? If so, you may have some concerns. Yes, it is typically safe for your child to use the internet to do research for school projects, but did you also know that children and teens are now using it to communicate with their friends or other internet users? Using the internet at a young age can become a problem.

Your children can find themselves in trouble online, if you do not know what internet safety steps can help to protect them.

Here we list five reasons why internet use can be dangerous for children and teenagers:

1. False Identities Are Easy to Create

Making new friends online is easy, but it is much different than doing so in person. Why? Because you can’t see who is at the other end of the computer. The internet makes it easy for someone to be anybody else. For example, if your child is using social networking websites online, they have to enter in their age. They could easily lie themselves or they could be talking to someone else who is.

2. Internet Predators

As it was previously stated, the internet makes it easy to create a new, false identity. Often times, the individuals who lie about their ages are internet predators. They are the ones who target children, like yours. Unfortunately, many children, teenagers, and their parents cannot discover an internet predator until it is too late, like when the predators try to approach your child or contact them in person.

3. So Many Websites To Choose From

What is nice about the internet is that you have so many websites to choose from. In fact, that is why it is a good way to research school projects. But, having so many websites to choose from can be dangerous. Your child can gain access to social networking websites, adult chat rooms, pornographic websites, and websites that are violent in nature. Unless you have parental controls set up, your child can easily access any type of website with a standard internet search.

4. Not All Information Is Private

Unfortunately, many individuals, including both children and parents, do not know that the information that is posted online isn’t always private. For instance, most teens have their MySpace profiles set to public, as opposed to private. This means that anyone can view it. There are also online message boards that are indexed by the search engines. This means that others can view the conversations that were discussed, even years before.

5. Children Are In Control

When your child uses the internet, they are the ones who are in control. This can be okay if your child is older and mature, but you honestly never know. You may ask your child not to communicate with strangers online, give out their phone numbers, or share pictures with strangers, but that doesn’t mean that they will follow your rules. For that reason, if you do let your child use the internet, be sure to monitor their use.

What Can You Do?

Firstly you have to realize that not always will be possible for you to control the sites you children visit, especially if he or she has the computer in his (her) bedroom. One of the solutions available is to install a parent control software to restrict some bad neighborhoods in you child’s computer as well as get yourself and your children informed of dangers when browsing the Internet.

Check online some resources available for Internet Safety For Kids

Have you ever had a website that has been hacked? In this article we’ll discuss how a hacker can disrupt an Internet connection and affect the files a user has on a computer. We also discuss some measures about how hackers can be stopped.

Hacking Your Computer

One of the ways hackers hack your computer is by creating dangerous software. Hackers can easily insert malware into a computer, which consists of files that can be especially damaging to the computer. The reason for these damaging capabilities is that a hacker can easily look through and edit files that are inside the user’s website or computer. Hacking the web raises security issues because it not only affects the websites involved, but it can also affect the users of the sites that have been affected.

Stealing Phone Numbers

Hackers who work on hacking the web can steal specific information that website visitors may give. This includes phone numbers that can be used to call people with unsolicited offers. In some cases, a hacker may have more control over the malware that is used and therefore insert this software into a mobile phone that is listed on a website database. This can cause the hacker to steal even more phone numbers.

Stealing Email Addresses

In many cases, hackers can send data to people on a contact list and this is then considered spam. They can send viruses and other pieces of malware that will only end up expanding the level of power that the hacker has. Some people may not know what to do with the emails that they get from a hacker because they may not know exactly whether the message is legitimate. One common way of hackers use nowadays is that they steal email addresses with high activity and use this address as a sender of spam messages to the whole contacts list. As this email address is legitimate they increase the opening rate of spam. Really nasty!

Stealing Financial Data

A hacker can steal the especially sensitive financial data. For people who are going to be sending financial information and other important pieces of data to a website, this information can be especially important. One particular way hacker use to do this is by sending fake emails with fake links to known websites asking the user to update his (her) information and by doing this they collect this critical information. Sites that use financial information recommend never click on such links; instead, the users should write the complete website url in his browser if they need to contact the website.

Stealing Your Website Home Page

As a website owner you could get invaded by keylogger-style viruses which especially targets Internet Explorer users, but it is known that some Mozilla Browsers have been attacked as well. Check this article on how this particular kind of hacking occurs and how you can stop it.

Some Protection Tips

Here are few simple tips to work with improving security. For businesses that run websites that may be prone to hackers, it is best to install a Good Firewall onto the server. This can be used to help monitor incoming transmissions and block any software that is going to be sent to the server without the permission of the company that owns the server.

Having the appropriate Antivirus Software is needed. A good antivirus program will automatically update itself as new information on viruses and other dangerous things that hackers may have to gain access to a website or your computer are known. With automatic updates, it will be easier to be protected.

Check online the available Products to Increase your Internet Security

The ongoing spreading of viruses and the consequent panic about them, determines on the vendors of commercial anti virus software, a continuous effort in updating their software against those ever growing computer threats.

Some theorize that antivirus companies have financial ties to virus writers, to generate their own market, though there is really no evidence that this really happens. Although it is known that some of the free or commercial antivirus software can considerable reduce performance, especially those freely distributed on the Internet. Some users may disable the antivirus protection to overcome this performance loss, thus increasing the risk of infection.

For maximum protection the antivirus software needs to be enabled at all times, even at the cost of slower performance. It is also important to know that you should not have more than one antivirus software installed on a single computer at any given time (and being both activated). This can seriously hinder your computer or cause a general failure.

When installing program updates…

It is also sometimes necessary to temporarily disable virus protection when you install major updates such as Windows Service Packs or updating graphics card drivers. Having antivirus protection running at the same time may prevent the update from installing properly or even installing it at all.

Check the Terms of Agreement

When you do decide to Buy Antivirus Software, the agreement may include a clause that your subscription will be automatically renewed and your credit card automatically billed at the time of you are supposed to renew without you authorizing it. For example, McAfee requires you to subscribe at least 60 days before the expiration of your present subscription. If that is the case, the subscriber may contest the charges with the credit card issuer, but this course of action is likely to be at no avail to you if in fact the subscriber had authorized such a “continuous payment authority”.

Some Additional Concerning Tips

Some antivirus programs are actually spyware masquerading as antivirus software. It is highly advisable to purchase antivirus software from a recognized site. Some free antivirus software programs may contain adware as well. For example, the home/small business version of a CA Anti-Virus 2008 displays an advert for CA products whenever the desktop is unlocked or after a period when the computer is not active.

It would be no surprise that such viruses that plague the desktop and the laptop world quickly migrate to mobile devices. More and more vendors in this space are offering solutions to combat secure mobile handsets with Antivirus Solutions.

There are many anti virus programs available; it is preferable to buy from trusted companies like McAfee, Symantec or Microsoft. Without an anti virus program you could end up losing much more money because of the expenses of repairing or replacing your computer.

Find many different trusted choices of Antivirus Software Programs for your home computer or office computer right here on the internet.