Local Security for the office PC -=The Firestarter=-
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  .'`-_-`',.`'-_ Issue 41 Article 4 _-'`,.'`-_-`',

(____________________________________________________)
|          Local Security for the office PC          |
(____________________________________________________)
                  -=The Firestarter=-
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Well for some of us, ensuring that our privacy needs
are met in the office is always something thats an
issue, now 99% of us will never store anything dodgy
on there work PC. BUT that still doesn't mean that the
draft copies of personal e-mails you typed up are not
going to be eyeballed by coprorate types. 

So how are we going to keep the personal things (or
half typed SWAT articles if your like myself) hidden
from prying eyes? 

Well first off its all going to depend on how your
computer systems function. 

Example. The PC i'm connected to is part of a nice
phat network, this pulls a backup of my HD every
night. What does it backup? well lucky me here
knows that it only takes the My Documents folder,
which, i must admit, does keep 99% of everything
safe, HOWEVER, since i want my PC backed up, i have
to leave my drives shared, not a good thing to do
at the best of times, why? well anyone will be able
to snoop around and pull copies of my files off the
system.

So first off, lets keep people out of the PC, what
shall we use? a personal firewall!

I chose BlackICE defender, purely because i had the
choice, and it is currently on a 30 day trial, after
that i'll probably use Zone Alarm (coz its free),
just installing it and leaving it on default settings
is more than enough, allowing ONLY the backup system
to access my drives, no other machine is able to get
in. 

So that closes one possible hole in my privacy. Its
easy to configure and it gives me some idea as to the
kinda of network traffic that seem to ping and probe
my machine a lot.

Next up is file security, since i know that only my
documents is backed up i can start to hide things
and keep them safe. 

Now i'm not going to go over the top with hiding files,
besides which, theres nothing on my PC that is incriminating
so a simple directory on C:\ will be fine. 

That keeps it from getting backed up, HOWEVER, what
if i wanted to keep it backed up? i mean, it saves
me the time copying files all over the place. 

I guess we'll have to encrypt the files first!

So i choose... Cryptext

freely avalible from: http://www.pcug.org.au/~njpayne/

ok i like this because it intigrates itself with 
Explorer and with a single click you can encrypt
anything with 160-bit encryption. More than ample
for you run of the mill office PC. 

Since this neat little application can encrypt/decrypt
at the click of a button, its idea for just hiding
everything in your "personal" directory. a single
click, you enter a password, and it all gets hidden.

Easy really!

Now i can safely pop the files into My Documents and
be assured that they will remain hidden from prying
eyes. BUT what if i forget to encrypt them ? heh now
that would be dumb. 

PGPDisk comes in handy here!

Most of you out there will have used it, if you haven't
then the basic run down is that it creates a large file
that contains all of your goodies, this file is then
accessed as if it where a second hard drive.

Resulting in what can only really be described as a
safe and secure way to keep your files from prying
eyes. Just remember to work from the second drive, 
and anything else MUST be encrypted.

E-Mail is another!

now we all know that no matter what you send, it can
be read by third parties. BUT did you know that each
bounced mail gets saved in the postmater mail box?

Hotmail or Hushmail are great for these occations!

the rule is simple, don't e-mail anything thats not
work related.

If you do, encrypt it!

Ok so its easy to keep things hidden, but we don't want
to attract too much attention, so we have to choose our
tools wisely, always opt for freeware programs, they
don't have to be some top of the range uncrackable
programs, just simple ones will be fine. You may work
for a multi million pound company, but they are not
gonna invest a penny in cracking anything you have on
your PC (unless for some reason you tend to attract that
kinda attention). Freeware programs are good because it
avoides the licensing issues. Everything on your home PC
might be pirated, but companies WILL NOT like you running
pirate software. 

"so why do you encrypt things on your pc?"

"I just keep all my passwords and things
 togeather so i don't loose them"
or
"Its a letter to my girlfriend i was working
on at lunch"
Something like that will most of the time be fine, especially
if its in the directory "c:\personal"

few companies have a real problem with the odd few personal
files on the computer, as long as they are nice and neatly
stored, you won't have a thing to worry about.

Enjoy!


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