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Users Worldwide Feel Internet Is 'Safer'
buzzardsbay writes "Baseline Magazine is reporting on a study by Cisco that teases out the differing attitudes about online security among users across the globe. For instance, remote workers worldwide think the internet is getting safer ... except the folks in Italy and Germany. These folks also have a lot of faith in their corporate IT departments as 51 percent said their work computers are more secure than their personal PCs, and nearly half (45 percent) believe they are more vulnerable to malware and hacks when they're working outside their corporate perimeter. Irony of ironies, the Brazilians hold Net security in the highest regard."
You are only as safe as the measures YOU employ to protect yourself. Your email may be hosted by the most secure company in the world but if your password is "password" or "firstnamelastname" or "123456789" etc then all their security measures are meaningless.
Likewise, if you're running unpatched versions of XP you could have the most secure password ever yet it's meaningless when you have a rootkit with a keystroke logger that's sending your password to a script kiddy in Russia.
Perhaps people "feel" safer because the marketing departments of certain companies... (Microsoft) tell them they are..
I use Linux, I keep my stuff patched/firewalled/well passworded (is that even a word?).
You feel secure for a while, then you get duped into clicking on a goatse/rotten.com type link. *shudder*
Really, that's what bothers me more than anything else. The occasional "Find sexy singles in your area ads" don't really bother nor register to me anymore. However the occasional gore (The disgusting kind, not the ex-vp kind) that lurks on the Internet really gets to me.
The goggles - they do nothing!
Precisely. As long as their computer still does what THEY want when they want to do it, it couldn't POSSIBLY have problems! It's spewing out crap to other users? Not my problem, mate!
Most malware infections are fixed because it slows the box down to a crawl and degrades the user experience; if the malware authors can fix that, people will NEVER get their stuff fixed.
and getting vaster every day. Most security is worthless. Its good enough to prevent a majority of threats from getting through, sometimes. The only thing protecting users is the size of the internet combined with the fact that most of them do not have anything of value stored on their computers. The only thing Joe Sixpack has that Evil Hacker wants is his credit card number, which let's face it, is not enough to retire off of. The only other things that can be taken from Joe Sixpack are his resources; CPU and bandwidth. The net result is you would still have to grind out a living as an Evil Hacker, or get into freelance corporate espionage. So yes, the internet seems safer, mainly because its bigger, not because it is technologically more capable of stopping the bad guys from getting you.
(I apologize for rambling, I'm sick in bed hopped up on meds)
These days the ones that were once bitten are twice shy, and if you run a decently updated box with no random cracks from the Intarwebs chances are slim you'll have any problems. Just recently I read that the online banks were starting to decline proposals to increase security - it was rare enough that simply paying up if people got swindled made more sense. In short, I think the people left that are getting suckered for the most part are the ones that'd get suckered by phone, by mail, by fax or any other way you'd get in touch with them.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
While I feel the internet has gotten a whole lot shittier with laws encroaching onto our once pristine wild wild west style play ground. I personally don't feel any less safe. There are risks out there of course, just has there has been for a long time now. But by practicing the same techniques I have for ages I'm fairly confident in my box.
If anything I might be slightly more confident as these days. I've always been a hardware geek and as case mods have come down in price and the software to support them has matured, I now have instantaneous access to system resource utilization and temperatures through various means that allow me to gauge my computer utilization with a glance, contrast that to the task at hand and you know when things are being accessed outside of your control. The cost of a hardware based SPI firewall is within anyones range. Also memory prices are so cheap you can afford the extra 128+ required to leave a software based firewall, anti-virus and network logger running.
And I always delve into windows to ensure maximum resources are available for gaming. So along the way I get to know windows on a level most never do. So all it takes is a quick glance at which processes are running to keep me feeling okay about things.
Really the only thing that worries me are rootkits, but I ran those scanners once in a while. However I don't really know how much faith I should be putting in them... Either way a competent user shouldn't have to much to worry about.
With that being said, I don't think I would put quite as much faith in network security at work, granted the admin's are paid and trained to do what they do. But they also, generally, have an increased workload and many other responsibilities.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
More secure doesn't mean absolutly Secure. 10 years for your measurement isn't really a good frame. It is like saying driving a was was far safer back in the early 1900's. Where only a few people owned cars and if they did they drove them very carfully because they were cheap and a luxery item.
The same with the net back in 1998. Most people use dialup AOL was the king of internet and many people though they were using the internet while never leaving AOL servers. The Buffer Overflow hack was just newly descovered and branded to unpredictible to really be useful. The Browser Wars just got into full swing Active X controls was the new technology that going to kill Java. If you were going to hack into someones system you are better off finding systems with default blank passwords, or weak passwords. Making an internet running virus was near impossible having the fact that Most windows systems were running dialup and it would take to long for the virus to download. And many of the install base didn't have browsers or email clients with the "flexibility" or what I called stupidly deciding that a web browser or email client should have a client side language running on it. (that allows for access to your own files).
But lets compare the Net Today then say 2003. Most Email Services sucessfully filter out Virus Emails and Spam mail. Much of the software has been modified to protect from a lot of buffer overflow errors. Even windows who generally sucks in security now acts like a paranoid person living with a tin foil hat saying when something potentionally dangerious is about to happen, vs. it running automaticlly in 2003 without any human intervention. Every Major Browser has popup blocking and there are very few professional sites that use it. Legit use of Spam has became unprofitible and it dieing, and is no longer considered a way to make a living. People are not longer blindly going to windows and Most people who are using windows are using XP (With a more secure (kinda) NT Kernel) vs 98 or ME back in 2003 XP was still new, the growth in Macs and Linux have lessen the ease that virus can spread and most people now have at least software firewalls but a lot have cheap and afordable hardware firewalls/routers. Compared to back in 2003 where they plugged their computer live into the cable modem.
Are there still attacks going on... Sure but is it safer then 2003 I would say yes. Is it aboslutly secure where you can put your guard down... No abosulutly not.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Feeling safer depends what you're running. I use XP and Linux, feel a fair bit safer when using Linux.
What the applications may be doing in the background when using Windows is another matter. Connect to get an update of a package, and oh by the way, lets send some encrypted "anon" user data, or you need to enable a feature for the package you paid for, and the only way to do it is to do it online - and who knows what that sends about your system (enabling some CODEC'S in Adobe Premier Elements springs to my mind).
Windows has it's browser hooked into the system core, how anyone would feel safe with that when using IE!?! With the recent fuss over Skype, do they still think they are "safe"?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
That's why dualcore processors are nice. If you limit the malware to only running on one processor, the user would probably never figure it out. I think that most malware authors try not to monopolize the resources. The problem is that if you have one piece of malware, you probably have a whole bunch of it installed. Once you get lots of malware, that's when you're machine really starts to slow down.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
You haven't done much end-user support, have you? People still install Bonzi Buddy, etc. because they want a furry, cute "friend" or whatever screensavers they can find, and click yes to every prompt because they know that way things will work.
The Internet isn't much safer, the users are just as clueless, and water is still wet. The only thing that's improved is defense against automated attacks, which while a very good thing, is still just the tortilla on the enchilada.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.