The Internet is not always safe or secure. Many governments are looking at large portions of the Internet-based activities in order to protect their citizens from terrorists and other adversaries. APT (advanced persistant threat) groups are actively seeking to access your communications, personal/private information, and online accounts.
We must reevaluate what it means for us to be safe online.
When discussing security, it is important to be clear and specific. Security is not a single concept, solution or state.
It is a combination a number of aspects, implementations, perspectives. Security is often a relative term that has graded levels, rather than an end-state that an individual or an organization can achieve.
This means that a system is never secure, but it is always secure. There are no systems that can’t be compromised. An attacker might choose to compromise the system that is easier to compromise if security is more difficult than others.
We need to consider several aspects of security when securing online activities.
Online security should address at most two frequently misunderstood topics:
Privacy
Anonymity
Privacy is the protection and confidentiality of information about you against unauthorised collection. Privacy is generally defined as the ability to provide confidentiality protection.
Anonymity refers to being able communicate with others without revealing your identity. These terms can also be referred to as:
Privacy means that others cannot see what your communications are or what you are doing, but they can identify you.
Anonymity allows others to see what you’re doing and what you’re communicating, but not who you are.
These concepts are often misunderstood. We want privacy and anonymity. Unfortunately, we don’t have either privacy or anonymity online unless we take proactive steps to protect our data and ourselves.
Always have a goal or purpose when considering online security options. Online security can be threatened by malicious code, hackers, governments, and corporations.
Only by having a clear goal in mind, can you choose the best solutions. You can determine if the activity you want to stop can still occur after you have implemented a security solution.
Here are 10 ways you can improve your privacy when browsing the internet:
1. Use a VPN
There is no safe place on the Internet. Everything can be hacked. The worst place to be is your local connection.
Your most important link in your connectivity chain is the connection you use to access the Internet. All data that passes through your local Internet connection are directly related to you as they were sent by you or requested by you for retrieval.
This initial link is also the location where DNS spoofing attacks, attacker-in-the-middle attacks, sniffing attacks, and hijacking attacks are most effective and targeted (at you! ).
These terms are not familiar? Check out our Cybersecurity Glossary.
To protect your local link, you must make it a daily habit. While all of my recommendations are useful, none of them will be of much benefit if you don’t protect your local link.
VPNs are required to protect your local link.
VPN (Virtual Private Network), is an encrypted network connection between your system and another system over the Internet. This connection allows you to send all your Internet communications via an encrypted tunnel. A VPN provides protection against attackers and attacks at the location of your initial Internet connection, including other neighbors, rogue access points and even unscrupulous ISP employees.
Although a VPN is not the best solution, it can be a good option.