Scan the lobby at any office building and you’ll see them: Busy executives scrolling through messages on their PDAs, flipping through stacks of client files, and carrying on animated conversations with colleagues via cell phone. No one appreciates the convenience of today’s virtual office more than the globetrotting Road Warrior. But are you maintaining the same high standards for data security when you’re on the go? Here are some tips for reducing the risk of a glitch when you’re away from the office:
Email and Spam
The “Red Flags” Rule: Are You Complying with New Requirements for Fighting Identity Theft?
Original article by Tiffany George and Pavneet Singh
The expression “red flag” signals “Danger: Be alert to problems ahead.” For millions of consumers every year, identity theft is more than a threat — it’s their reality. The economic, psychological, and emotional harm to victims can be devastating. But businesses often bear the biggest part of the monetary damage from identity theft.
It’s everyone’s responsibility to do what they can to fight identity theft. But businesses and organizations that offer credit or other financial services can be the first to spot the red flags that signal the risk of identity theft, including suspicious activity indicating that identity thieves may be using stolen information like names, Social Security numbers, account numbers, and birth dates to open new accounts or raid existing ones.
Why Email Encryption is Critical
We’ve all heard the admonition a couple of times to secure our confidential data before sending it as an email attachment. Even a simple password-protected zip file is still better than nothing. On the high end, email encryption using tools like PGP, or the one included with Astaro Security Gateway will insure that your email is protected from prying eyes. There are free tools out there like AxCrypt, the open source file encryption software which allows you to encrypt single files or folders. I have seen a lot of clients sending off bank statements, credit card and social security numbers via email without encryption or protection.
Outlook 2007 and Gateways
I recently got a call from a client who was having a hard time connecting to their Exchange 2003 server. They kept getting a “disconnected” error. I told them to ping the exchange server and other computers on the network to see if they would get a response, they did and everything looked fine. I … Read more
Employee Surveillance on Steroids
So the other day I went to a conference on security and listened to a couple of rehashed arguments on why business owners should secure their networks, data and mobile devices. Pretty standard stuff.
Then we got into the latest development in employee monitoring and surveillance technology and I found myself going “whoa”, can they really do that? Sad fact is, yes, employers can really strip you down to your bones in terms of keeping tabs on what you do at work.
A GMail Headache
For quite some time now, I have struggled to come to terms with the inability to do your regular sort on emails in my gmail inbox. Yes, I have heard of and read tomes about labels and filters and other nifty ways of fixing the sort problem but I still would love to have the … Read more