Digital Security Resources for Parents

Internet Safety 101 site: Enough Is Enough® understands that Internet safety is a shared responsibility between the public, the Internet industry, and the legal community. However, parents remain the 'first line of defense' in protecting their children against Internet safety dangers. Unfortunately, parents, educators and other caring adults are ill-equipped, uninformed and often overwhelmed when it comes to Internet safety issues, and they need credible outside help. As the nation's leading Internet safety organization since 1994, EIE has responded to this call for action by creating Internet Safety 101SM, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice. Internet Safety 101SM is a widely-renowned resource and teaching series that paints a comprehensive picture of the dangers children encounter online. Through the Internet Safety 101SM program, EIE strives to educate and empower parents, educators and other caring adults with the information they need to effectively protect children from Internet dangers.

 Link: https://internetsafety101.org/parentsguidetosocialmedia

A Parent's Guide to SmartPhone Security: with this guide you can make your smartphone safer for your kids in just 11 easy steps. 

Link: https://internetsafety101.org/objects/Parents_Guide_to_Smart_Phone_Security.pdf

FBI Parents Resources: Get advice and information to help protect your children from dangers lurking in both the online and offline worlds.  

• About Protecting Your Kids: Learn how to Contact The FBI; Report child abductions or abuse
• FBI Child ID App: The FBI's Child ID App provides parents with an easy way to electronically store their children’s information and identity.
• Get advice and information to help protect your children from dangers lurking in both the online and offline worlds.

Link: https://www.fbi.gov/resources/parents

KidsHealth - Internet Safety Guide: The Internet can be wonderful for kids. They can use it to research school reports, communicate with teachers and other kids, and play interactive games.
But online access also comes with risks, like inappropriate content, cyberbullying, and online predators. Using apps and websites where kids interact, predators may pose as a child or teen looking to make a new friend. They might prod the child to exchange personal information, such as address and phone number, or encourage kids to call them, seeing their phone number via caller ID.

Link: https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/net-safety.html

Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI): Need help talking with your kids about online safety? Want to know about parental controls? Looking for a simple set of rules to use with your children? FOSI’s Good Digital Parenting provides you with videos, tip sheets, resources, blogs, and more.

Link: https://www.fosi.org/good-digital-parenting/

National Cyber Security Alliance/Stay Safe Online: Here are helpful links from the National Cyber Security Alliance's sponsors, partners and friends to help you and your friends and family be safer and more secure online.

Link: https://staysafeonline.org/stay-safe-online/related-links/

Tom's Guide: Best Parental Control Apps 2019: The best parental-control apps for smartphones can help you track your kids, see whom they are communicating with, block kids from viewing objectionable or dangerous websites, and even help kids understand the value of limits while preventing them from accessing adult content or communicating with strangers.

Link: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-parental-control-apps,review-2258.html

PCMag.com - The Best Tracking Devices for Kids: Kids get lost. GPS and Bluetooth trackers can help find them and keep them safe. With the help of our own children, we've tested clips, smartwatches, and wearables to determine what type works best and which one is right for you.

Link: https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/362044/the-best-tracking-devices-for-kids

OpenDNS - Basic Web Filtering and Protection: OpenDNS is the name of a Domain Name System (DNS) service as well as of the company that provides that service. The OpenDNS service extends the DNS by incorporating features such as content filtering and phishing protection.  Get OpenDNS Family Shield

Link: https://www.opendns.com/setupguide/#familyshield

Great Online Safety Guide for Families

Ran across this today.  It's a great source for online safety information for families.  It covers such areas:
Different Age Levels - Elementary School Children (ages 5-7), Tween Children (8-12), Teens (13-17), and college age and beyond.
Basic Subjects - Safe browsing, Protecting passwords, wireless networks, parental control software, and online faves.
Specific Risks - Internet Predators, Plagiarism and cheating, Cyber bullying and stalking, Filesharing & music/video downloading, Private information & ID theft, Social networking sites, Porn, gambling, racism, Teen online privacy, Email and instant messaging, blogging, Viruses, Worms, Spyware, and digital photography.

It's well written and is a great resource for families.  It has a great resource section too..

A must read for any family with kids on the Internet.....

CLICK HERE for the Guide

Presentation: Combat Readiness In the IT Infrastructure

Content Removed.

The 9 Most Useful Computer Security Blogs

UPDATED
I currently read many blogs and have a bunch of RSS feeds directed to my blackberry via viigo software so I can keep up on what’s going on in the cloud we call the Internet.  It is rare, however, to find blogs that are consistent and thorough with their postings and content.  The following is my list of the 9 most important and useful blogs related to Computer Security:
1.  The Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC).  The MSRC blog was launched in February 2005 and provides a real-time way for the Microsoft Security Response Center to communicate with customers.  Topics include day-to-day “behind the scenes” information that helps customers understand Microsoft’s security response efforts, updates during early stages of security incidents.
2.  Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds blog.  Having worked around financial crimes for a number of years, Ed Dickson noticed they seemed to be on the rise, one reason for this is technology, which grows more rapidly than the laws designed to protect us from it.  Ed’s blog is a resource to educate people on Identity Theft, it also strives to educate the common person on the rapidly growing problem of crimes enabled (made too easy) by technology and the Internet.
3.  TaoSecurity blog.  Richard Bejlitch is the author of one of my favorite books on Information Security, “The Tao of Network Security Monitoring.”  His blog focuses on digital security and the practices of network security monitoring, incident response, and forensics.
4.  Wired Magazine’s Threat Level.  This excellent blog is dedicated to dissecting the news to find some really interesting gems related to computer, government, and general security information.
5.  SANS Computer Forensics, Investigation, and Response.  A team of GIAC certified forensics professionals share their thoughts on fighting crime and unravelling incidents “One Byte At A Time”.   This is an excellent source if you really want to get into the guts of your computer.
6.  Avira’s Tech blog.  Avira, the maker of antivir (one of the most highly rated, free for home use, virus scanners) keeps its readers up-to-date on the latest virus news.
7.  Krebs on Security.  This is Brian Krebs security blog.  He offers excellent commentary on computer security related topics.  Much of what he covers surrounds cybercrime, vulnerabilities, and hacking groups with established footholds.
8.  The Museum of Hoaxes.  This blog is dedicated to examining dubious claims and mischief of all kinds.  If you’re checking into an email you received from a prince in Nigeria, this is an excellent place to start.
9. Hoax Slayer.  Tracks many of the email hoaxes and other Internet based hoaxes.  Great site, with quick navigation and search.

Tip: Create a Boot CD or USB Drive to Save Your System

There have been dozens of times over the years where I’ve had to boot a dead system or break into a suspect’s system to recover data or restore the functionality of a system.  It used to be pretty tough – often I had to remove the hard disk and mount it on another system to do this.  Now, it’s much easier.  Today there are several tools that will allow you to create a Boot CD or USB drive that you can insert into a system and boot the computer without having to boot off of the hard drive.  The plus is, if the system has a virus or malfunction, you are not running off of the infected hard drive – but off of the CD or USB drive.  You also keep from modifying the contents of the hard disk so that you can maintain a forensic path to data discovery.  There are two boot CD’s and USB Drives that I carry with me today:

The first one is an Ultimate Boot CD I created with BartPE that has your basic disk imaging, virus scanning, and other operating system tools installed on it.  BartPE allows a user to boot Windows, even if a hardware or software fault has disabled the installed operating systems on the internal hard drive — for instance, to recover files. It can also be used to scan for and remove rootkits, viruses and spyware (that have infected boot files), or to reset a lost administrator password.  Here’s a tutorial on installing BartPE



The second one is a Knoppix based CD that has tons of capabilities for data retrieval, system interrogation, and a number of tools that will allow me to perform a security check of the network I’m in.  The particular CD I use is the BackTrack live CD distribution.  It contains over 300 tools for network penetration testing (both wired and wireless), system imaging, remote network monitoring, packet capturing (like Network Miner), and forensic system analysis.  It is very useful and the interface is easier than I was expecting.  Here’s a video on installing BackTrack onto a USB thumb drive.

Here's an intro video to Backtrack


I find these tools very useful and use them often to solve all sorts of problems.  I always find that I am creating new ones because I keep giving them away.

3 Tools for Backing Up Your Data

Computers die.  Either from old age, misuse, or some nasty virus.  They just croak and it’s never fun.  I know, I’ve been there.  Had my system all full of cool tools, massive quantities of photos, documents I’ve written, songs I’ve collected – all gone.  Poof!!!   In my experience I’ve found that all computers die eventually.  That’s why it is critically important that you backup your systems.  Here I offer three strategies of making sure your stuff remains even if your system croaks.
1.  Use an external drive (or network drive).  These are relatively cheap for tons of storage.  You can spend around $150.00 and get half a terabyte of storage.  Check out the Maxtor One Touch – it even has software that will help you backup your data with the touch of a button.
2.  Use an online service.  Mozy Remote Desktop Backup service provides a lot of storage for $3.95 plus $.50 per Gigabyte per month.  They’ve had great reviews and a very easy to use interface.
3.  Use your domain provider.  I am amazed at how cheap online domain registration and storage costs now days.  I spend $3.95 per month  to maintainpaulfdixon.com along with unlimited email addresses, unlimited storage, and unlimited bandwidth at justhost.com.  The service provides some very easy to install click installations of online photo galleries, popular blogging tools (like this wordpress blog), ftp and other file storage alternatives.  It is simple to setup and very easy to maintain if you keep on top of it.
The bottom line is =  you have to put some out some effort but it is well worth it.

The FBI's Security Guide for Protecting Children Online

The FBI has put together an excellent resource for protecting your children on-line.  This guide is written for parents and it contains an excellent analysis of how to tell if your kid is doing something on-line that they should not be doing and what to do if you find out.  In summary, they want parents to know:
The signs your child may be at risk to on-line threats:

• Your child spends large amounts of time on-line, especially at night.
• You find pornography on your child’s computer.
• Your child receives phone calls from men you don’t know or is making calls, sometimes long distance, to numbers you don’t recognize
• Your child receives mail, gifts, or packages from someone you don’t know.
• Your child turns the computer monitor off or quickly changes the screen on the monitor when you come into the room.
• Your child becomes withdrawn from the family.
• Your child is using an on-line account belonging to someone else.

Click Here for the guide.