Safe wireless (almost)? Media Access Control (MAC) Addressing filtering is a form of wireless protection that can be used to keep unwanted visitors from accessing (stealing time on) your wireless high speed connection. Every network chip set has a unique address, in the format of 00-00-00-00-00-00, where an identifying address is stored, e.g., 06-12-f3-d2-50-e2. This address can be hard coded into your wireless router MAC filtering table for each computing device, e.g., iPod, PC, notebook, wireless DVD player, smartphone, etc., on your wireless network to allow access only to that (those) devices with corresponding MAC addresses while excluding all other devices. Here's a good link to more on MAC addressing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address The chances of someone hacking into your wireless router are much less when using very specific MAC addressing. While not impossible to hack, gaining access is harder to achieve. My guess is that most hackers wouldn't try to gain access to private homes unless there was a very, very good reason. Business hacking is another story all together. One downside to MAC addressing is the need to manually add new systems to the filtering table in your router, e.g., someone visiting who needs quick access to the Internet with their wireless device. MAC addressing filtering would work best in environments where system changes (device adds and removals are infrequent). Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is an older wireless protection scheme (still in use). WEP doesn't provide as much protection as the newer WPA/WPA2 security mechanisms. While both WEP and WPA will protect your wireless network, a hacker would only have to guess at your pass code to gain access. Many people use easily remembered pass codes, like their telephone number or the word 'password', making hacking in relatively easy. Currently, WPA/WPA2 is recommended by wireless router manufacturers and is sufficient for most wireless networks. Many networks have unprotected wireless making guessing a pass code irrelevant. If you view available wireless networks on your wireless device and see a lock icon next to a wireless network name, the wireless network is protected. If there is no lock icon, there is no protection from users hacking into/stealing that wireless network. One thing I recommend is using a generic wireless network name like "Linksys02" or "DLink27". Using a specific wireless network name like "SmithLawOffice" invites hackers in to see what can be found/accessed. Contact sam@desktop-specialists.com for help if you would like to insure that your wireless network protection is adequate to your security needs.

Backups: Do I really need them?

My favorite analogy regarding backups has to do with burglar alarms. The very first thing people do after everything near and dear to them is stolen from their home is to install a burglar alarm. Seems logical to me that the alarm should be installed first.

Same goes with backups. We store very valuable things on our computers; pictures, documents, spreadsheets, homework, work work, Favorites from your browser (most people forget these altogether), etc. The hard drive on which those things are stored is a mechanical device that has the potential to fail at any time.

I recall a cover on PC Magazine in 1990 that had a 3600RPM hard drive in flames. The caption read something like, Not If, But When. Meaning that the drives were mechanical and would fail eventually. 3600RPM was the fastest speed hard drives were spinning at at that time. Today’s drives are running at 5400, 7200, 10,000 and 15,000 RPMs, with the majority of home systems running at either 5400 or 7200 RPMs.

Today’s PC architecture is designed so that Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices can be easily attached and configured generally with minimal user intervention and computer experience. Most USB hard drives on the market are two to three times the capacity of existing hard drives in use in most notebooks, netbooks and desktop systems making an add on USB drive overly sufficient to do the backup chores needed. In fact a 1TB (terabyte) drive can usually be used to completely backup two or three computers.

Once you buy the USB drive and follow the installation instructions. You’ll need to identify the information that needs to be backed up.
Most people think that all of the information on the drive needs to be backed up. That’s not necessary these days.

Most manufacturers today ship personal computers with a special partition on the hard drive that allows for easy restoration to the factory load (the same as the day you opened the computer for the first time). Each manufacturer has a different method for restoring (check your documentation or the manufacturer’s Website for specifics). Once your system’s hard drive is restored to the factory load, the backed up data on the USB drive can easily be copied back to the newly restored hard drive in your system. NOTE: NEVER do the restoration to the factory load unless you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. All information on the original hard drive will be wiped out prior to the drive being restored to the factory load. Restoring to the factory load is a good way to eliminate viruses, Trojans, worms, etc., when your virus protection program cannot eliminate the malicious software.

Next blog: Virus protection, Do I really need it?