The bad stuff on the Internet started out years ago as whacky infectious pranks written by college students on a sugar high. Today it’s REALLY bad stuff: sophisticated malcode used by organized crime gangs to plunder billions. It’s written by highly educated and unemployed computer professionals in places like Eastern Europe
Social engineering techniques also have reached incredible levels of sophistication. Seemingly silly Facebook “likes” take Facebookers to evil places. Poisoned search engine results send “Paris Hilton nude” traffic to criminal sites. A 24/7 deluge of phishing email tries to steal bank web site logins and any other data of value.
We’re not just talking about the annoying political emails from your certifiable relatives here. We’re talking about the BIG STUFF.
So, what’s the latest technique for keeping these real cyber hordes outside the gates?
It’s security in the “cloud.”
There are cloud services that provide data backup, file storage, compliance monitoring, email filtering, security and a lot of other things.
Where did “in the cloud” come from?
Ever since computer techies started trying to do presentation drawings of their computer networks they’ve always represented the Internet as a cloud. So, services that run on remote servers over the Internet – cloud computing. Modern computing is now old enough to have traditions.
Why “in the cloud?”
Dick and Jane home computer users generally think of computer security “stuff” as something they download and install on their computers. Those “security things” take up disk space, slow down performance, need to be updated and need daily “signature updates.”
Updates are a serious problem. A huge percentage of vulnerabilities that are used by malicious code and hackers have been fixed (patched.) However, the people and businesses that become victims ever got around to installing the patches.
Most security product vendors do their best to make things easy. Automated updates for major operating systems, browsers and other software are becoming a norm. Even still, there might be a better/cheaper/faster way.
The malicious stuff that goes after Dick and Jane’s credit card data, social security numbers and bank account logins generally use web sites to suck down and store stolen data.
They can. It’s called DNS filtering. DNS means Domain Name Service. It’s the Internet phone book where web addresses like salon.com are converted into “DNS” numbers that computers can deal with (salon.com = 208.17.81.131 or thereabouts).
There is a free DNS filter called ClearCloud available here: http://clearclouddns.com/What-is-ClearCloud/
ClearCloud checks every website address a computer tries to access, whether the user is browsing the Internet or clicking a link in an email. It also filters the work of programs that work under the hood trying to communicate with servers for information or updates. Due to the nature of DNS, it can’t stop every bad website, but it will stop access to many – and it’s certainly a great additional layer of protection.
Sunbelt Software (of GFI Software), the Tampa Bay, Florida-area company that offers ClearCloud, takes advantage of the sharing of information among a wide number of companies and groups in the computer security industry to keep the blacklist updated.
This is not unlike you going clubbing in a scary but fun part of town with a very large friend who spends a lot of time there and knows which places to avoid.
Running the filter through DNS “in the cloud” means quick updates and it doesn’t get out of date. It also means that there is no slowdown of a user’s machine while filtering software checks a data base to examine a web site request.
As for your crazy e-mailing relatives, ClearCloud can’t help you there. You’ll have to set filters in your email client by yourself:
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rugrat
ccdarling
Erica K
Director of Studies
Stephanie Russell-Kraft
Jeremiah Horrigan
Salon.com
Comments
Thank goodness or you..
Rated with hugs
Thanks Catherine for always giving us information we can use.