This was supposed to be the past part of a 3-segment presentation but had to be dropped because of a change in the schedule. The first couple of segments covered Stuxnet & Reputation Based security.

1. If You Get Run Over By A Truck On The Internet, Blame Yourself. Vishal Kapoor http://sg.linkedin.com/in/vishalkapoorinfotech/

2. All the women in your Yahoo! address book have an email saying you love them & more Locked out of Facebook Your tweets are suddenly about nothing but Viagra clones Money wired into another account & cashed out.

3. Michael Jackson understood this before YOU did! I’m talking to the man in the mirror! I’m askin’ him to change his waaaays!

4. They were called ‘personal computers’ for a reason. Don’t share your laptop. Not with your wife, kids, friends or girlfriend. If you don’t control which websites your computer is taken to or what is downloaded, then don’t act shocked later.

5. Separate computers are worth the price. The smaller the number of people who use a given PC/laptop, the more control you have. Your teen already has one for school or college, you have one & don’t tell me you didn’t get something for the wife. You really don’t want to use the same laptop your kid uses to surf to BitTorrent heaven.

6. The only people who ever gave you free stuff & expected nothing in return were your parents. Nobility died an early death on the Internet. Free means someone else is smiling. It might be ‘free’ to you but someone paid to put it up there & hoped it got downloaded. That someone wants to make a buck.

7. Safety ain’t cheap but it doesn’t cost a lot either. Smart people pay for full-fledged, legit, protection software. That piece of software is the only thing between you and a flying bullet on the Internet. Given the sheer volume of malware on the Internet, it doesn’t make sense to further stack the odds against yourself by installing bogus, ‘free’ antivirus.

8. Complicated passwords aren’t much good if you have a keystroke logger on your laptop (also see previous slide). Don’t go to town with your new, custom domain & email. Keep it tight. Set up an alternate email address for lost password recovery. Take the trouble to create a custom domain name & email. It doesn’t cost much. I use Google Apps Standard.

9. Just because you can access your bank account from anywhere, it doesn’t mean you should. Don’t access your account from any computer that happens to be handy. Laziness will make you poor. Type in the URL. The only thing THAT will cost you is calories.

10. One day, soon, that truck WILL find you. Back up your data. Hard disks are cheap. Let me know if you want recommendations for backup & restore s/w. If nothing else, just do a simple copy/paste for all your folders every 15 days. Don’t backup to a USB ‘key’. You WILL lose it!

11. Boredom + Internet access = lots of clicks on links. It doesn’t matter what I say. You will never stop clicking on that stuff, will you?

12. Small changes will go a long way in keeping you safe.