Cyber Security (Official Government Tips)

Here is what the Indian Government's premier Cyber Security Cops ("CBI") advise you to do in the name of "security"

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Online Security Tipes

Tips for Children

* Do not give out identifying information such as Name, Home Address, School Name or Telephone Number in a chat room.

* Do not send your photograph to any one on the Net without first checking with the parent or guardian.

* Do not respond to messages or bulletin board items that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent or threatening.

* Never arrange a face to face meeting without telling parent or guardian.

* Remember that people online may not be who they seem to be.

Tips for parents

* Use content filtering softwares on your PC to protect children from pornography, gambling, hate speech, drugs and alcohol.

* There are also softwares to establish time controls for individual users (for example blocking usage after a particular time at night) and log surfing activities allowing parents to see which sites the child has visited. Use these softwares.

Protect Yourself and Your PC

* Use the latest version of a good anti-virus software package which allows updations from the Internet.

* Use the latest version of the operating system, web browsers and e-mail programs.

* Don't open e-mail attachments unless you know the source. Attachments, especially executables (those having .exe extension) can be dangerous.

* Confirm the site you are doing business with. Secure yourself against "web-spoofing". Do not go to websites from email links.

* Use hard to guess passwords that contain mixes of numbers and letters. They should not be dictionary words. They should combine upper and lower case characters.

* Use different passwords for different websites.

* Send credit card information only to secure sites

* Use a security program that gives you control over "cookies" that send information back to websites. Letting all cookies in without monitoring them could be risky.

Protect Your Website

* Stay informed and be in touch with security related news.

* Watch traffic to your site. Put host-based intrusion detection devices on your web servers and monitor activity looking for any irregularities.

* Put in firewalls.

* Configure your firewalls correctly.

* Develop your web content off line.

* Make sure that the web servers running your public web site are physically separate and individually protected from your internal corporate network.

* Protect your databases. If your web site serves up dynamic content from a database, consider putting that database behind a second interface on your firewall, with tighter access rules than the interface to your web server.

* Back up your web site after every updation, so that you can re-launch it, immediately, in case of a malicious defacement.