As much as we love to assume free Wi-Fi is secure, this is far from the truth. Because you are attaching to a service many others are connected to as well, without security measures, your device can be hacked, especially if the network is unencrypted. Because this encryption involves handing out a 26-character hexadecimal key to every individual wanting to use that network, most places opt for ease of access over security. And even with a secure network, your information is vulnerable to everyone else who has the password and is on the network.

This may not seem like such a big deal and many people don’t believe they have anything to hide on their personal devices, but remember what you use on those devices. Chances are your e-mail is attached as well as all other social media sites. You may have apps that track your finances or private messages to certain others that you would never want anyone else to see. Luckily, there are steps that can be taken to reduce and prevent any unwanted information grabbers from accessing your personal information.

To start, go through your computer’s settings in order to verify your operating system’s security functions are all set to offer the highest protection. Open up the Control Panel and double check that your Firewall is enabled for both private and public networks. Then, go to Network and Sharing to open Change advanced sharing settings. In here, you can turn off file and printer sharing and network discovery for public networks.

One of the most important things to watch for is HTTPS. Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure ensures secure communication across the web. Many of the major email systems use this when you log in (as another layer of password protection) but drop the security as soon as the login is complete. To keep this going, HTTPS Everywhere is a browser extension that gives you a secure connection when browsing some of the more popular sites. It can also be programmed for other sites you like to visit that don’t use HTTPS.

Not every place on the internet provides the choice of HTTPS, and VPNs are there to fill in the security gap. Virtual Private Networks allows data to be sent and received through public access points as if it were directly connected to a secure network. Many businesses offer this for company devices, but if you are an individual looking for that kind of security, ProXPN is a free version that can be upgraded. Unfortunately, it limits your speed, but other choices include VPNBook, OpenVPN Shield Exchange, and OkayFreedom.

With these three steps implemented, secure public Wi-Fi can be achieved. No longer will you have to worry about connecting in an unsure environment with strangers, never knowing if your information is being stolen. With all of the options free of charge, it is also an affordable means of protecting yourself that only takes a little time and effort to implement and guarantee safety.

In Demand IT Skills

Password Management Tools

Net Neutrality for the Layperson

What are a few unique pieces of career advice that nobody ever mentions?

As the cloud buzz is getting louder with every passing day you are tempted to take the big leap into the cloud but may have restrained yourself paranoid by ad infinitum cloud security discussions floating on the web. No one can deny the fact that your data is the lifeblood your business. So, undoubtedly its security is of paramount importance for survival of your business.  As cloud computing is a paradigm shift from the traditional ways of using computing resources, you must understand its practical security aspects.

Is Cloud Computing Safe?

There can’t be a binary answer (Yes or No) to this question. But with my experience and as an authority on the subject I can tell you that technologies enabling Cloud services are not in any way less secure than the traditional or on-premise hosting model.  Also, with the evolution of technology, the cloud providers are getting matured and almost all the providers are offering built-in security, privacy, data backups and risk management as a part of their core service.If you are not a big IT company then you must ask yourself:

·         Can an on-premise solution or a traditional hosting provider match the same level of standard security and privacy requirement as provided by the specialist cloud provider whose core competency lies in providing state of the art security and privacy?

C TRAINING – THE THREE MAIN STAGES OF PROGRAMMING DEVELOPMENT

If you are an aspiring programmer, learning about programming in C is one of the most integral steps of your development.  It is essential that you get the highest quality C training, so that you are well-grounded in the language, and are going to be able to fulfill most of your programming and developmental tasks.  Learning about all aspects of the programming language, including how to fully utilize its portability and design will help you to secure your future in computer programming.  These are some of the concepts you should familiarize yourself with:

·         Major elements of the programming language – This includes things like libraries of functions, using data flow control, and a thourough examination of the basic data types the language is able to address.  As you learn about these fundamental elements, make sure to get practical experience during the course of your C training also, by actually writing programs that follow whatever curriculum you have chosen.

·         Different techniques and other programming elements – Different series of coursework choose to emphasize different things, but try to learn as much as you can about different techniques that are actually employed.  Manipulating both characters and strings, allocating dynamic memory in the proper manner, defining macros, and utilizing the runtime library are all examples of these elements.

Structure Rule Language

To aid in the ease of rule authoring, Blaze Software, now Fair Isaac, created the proprietary Structure Rule Language (SRL), an object-oriented programming language designed to enable those with little or no background in software development to pen rules. Although the capabilities of this language are far too extensive to detail in this article, we can examine the basic rule syntax.

Rules in the SRL take the following form:

rule RuleName [at | priority M] is