The Ten Most Dangerous Things Users Do Online

The Ten Most Dangerous Things Users Do Online

Most of this was taken from the link in the title (that inspired me to post this)

End users -- god bless ‘em. You can’t live with ‘em -- but without them, you wouldn’t have a job. They’re the reason you have an IT infrastructure; they’re also the single greatest threat to the security of that infrastructure.Because, in the end, most users have no idea how dangerous their online behavior is.No matter how many times they train them, no matter how many classes they hold, most IT professionals still watch helplessly as end users introduce new malware because they "just couldn’t resist looking at the attachment." Security pros cringe as their users download software for personal use, turn off firewalls to speed up a connection, or leave their passwords stuck to their laptops.Wouldn’t it be nice if you could give end users a list of the most dangerous things they do online every day, and then tell them why those activities are particularly risky?
Stick this up on the door to your office. Better yet, stick it up on the company bulletin board -- or post it directly to each of your users. If it keeps one user from making a big mistake, then we’ll have done our job -- and so will you.

1. Clicking on email attachments from unknown senders - Do people still do this? Yes they do!

2. Installing unauthorized applications - a nightmare for IT dept, why because users just install what they want not what is need. Example Stock ticker when you are a software programmer. Or Itunes That is personnel not work has no place on a work computer and opens a hole a hacker could use to get to your computer.

3. Turning off or disabling automated security tools. - Anti virus scans all files so to speed up your down load you turn it off then open that attach from someone you don’t know and infect the network.

4. Opening HTML or plain-text messages from unknown senders same as item 1

5. Surfing gambling, porn, or other legally-risky sites Never on a work PC or laptop. Most Trojan viruses are distributed on these sites.

6. Giving out passwords, tokens, or smart cards - Just plain Dumb

7. Random surfing of unknown, untrusted Websites see item 5

8. Attaching to an unknown, untrustworthy WiFi network - commen with Lap top users never do this with a work laptop

9. Filling out Web scripts, forms, or registration pages - you wonder where all that spam comes from????

10. Participating in chat rooms or social networking sites - there is a tendency to give out too much information like at Face book, My Space, Xanga or others If your kids are on these sites look at their page. and help them be safe!

Origin of the Internet

Sorry I have not blogged in a while. I found this interesting write up and have added a few links on some of the names. Hope you enjoy. Orginal web page is here.

The first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962 discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. He envisioned a globally inter-connected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site. In spirit, the concept was very much like the Internet of today. Licklider was the first head of the computer research program at DARPA, starting in October 1962. While at DARPA he convinced his successors at DARPA, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts, of the importance of this networking concept.
In late 1966 Roberts went to DARPA to develop the computer network concept and quickly put together his plan for the "ARPANET", publishing it in 1967. At the conference where he presented the paper, there was also a paper on a packet network concept from the UK by Donald Davies and Roger Scantlebury of NPL. Scantlebury told Roberts about the NPL work as well as that of Paul Baran and others at RAND. The RAND group had written a paper on packet switching networks for secure voice in the military in 1964. It happened that the work at MIT (1961-1967), at RAND (1962-1965), and at NPL (1964-1967) had all proceeded in parallel without any of the researchers knowing about the other work. The word "packet" was adopted from the work at NPL and the proposed line speed to be used in the ARPANET design was upgraded from 2.4 kbps to 50 kbps.
In August 1968, after Roberts and the DARPA funded community had refined the overall structure and specifications for the ARPANET, an RFQ was released by DARPA for the development of one of the key components, the packet switches called Interface Message Processors (IMP's). The RFQ was won in December 1968 by a group headed by Frank Heart at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). As the BBN team worked on the IMP's with Bob Kahn playing a major role in the overall ARPANET architectural design, the network topology and economics were designed and optimized by Roberts working with Howard Frank and his team at Network Analysis Corporation, and the network measurement system was prepared by Kleinrock's team at UCLA.
Due to Kleinrock's early development of packet switching theory and his focus on analysis, design and measurement, his Network Measurement Center at UCLA was selected to be the first node on the ARPANET. All this came together in September 1969 when BBN installed the first IMP at UCLA and the first host computer was connected. Doug Engelbart's project on "Augmentation of Human Intellect" (which included NLS, an early hypertext system) at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) provided a second node. SRI supported the Network Information Center, led by Elizabeth (Jake) Feinler and including functions such as maintaining tables of host name to address mapping as well as a directory of the RFC's. One month later, when SRI was connected to the ARPANET, the first host-to-host message was sent from Kleinrock's laboratory to SRI. Two more nodes were added at UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah. These last two nodes incorporated application visualization projects, with Glen Culler and Burton Fried at UCSB investigating methods for display of mathematical functions using storage displays to deal with the problem of refresh over the net, and Robert Taylor and Ivan Sutherland at Utah investigating methods of 3-D representations over the net. Thus, by the end of 1969, four host computers were connected together into the initial ARPANET, and the budding Internet was off the ground. Even at this early stage, it should be noted that the networking research incorporated both work on the underlying network and work on how to utilize the network. This tradition continues to this day.
Computers were added quickly to the ARPANET during the following years, and work proceeded on completing a functionally complete Host-to-Host protocol and other network software. In December 1970 the Network Working Group (NWG) working under S. Crocker finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol (NCP). As the ARPANET sites completed implementing NCP during the period 1971-1972, the network users finally could begin to develop applications.
In October 1972 Kahn organized a large, very successful demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC). This was the first public demonstration of this new network technology to the public. It was also in 1972 that the initial "hot" application, electronic mail, was introduced. In March Ray Tomlinson at BBN wrote the basic email message send and read software, motivated by the need of the ARPANET developers for an easy coordination mechanism. In July, Roberts expanded its utility by writing the first email utility program to list, selectively read, file, forward, and respond to messages. From there email took off as the largest network application for over a decade. This was a harbinger of the kind of activity we see on the World Wide Web today, namely, the enormous growth of all kinds of "people-to-people" traffic.