As technology continues to advance, our security needs to get a lot stronger. Firewalls and anti-virus software is all well and good but we need to go beyond that. With that in mind, a VPN has gone from something occasionally useful to a necessity for most people. Here are eight reasons why you should use one: 1. Security One of the biggest reasons to use a VPN is the extra security that it provides you. In a world in which so much that we do is online, not least banking and managing credit cards and things, this gives...

Cybercrime is on the rise and one of the main reasons for this is that users are not thinking about security enough. Usernames are fairly easy to discover, with most being related to names/email addresses which can be found with just a simple Google search. So, when combined with a commonly used password, hackers will gain access to private, ‘secure’, files easily. In 2019, the most commonly used password was 123456. This was used by 23.2 million people who had their accounts hacked. The next most popular password was 123456789, which was used by more than 7.7 million hacked...

It might sound self-explanatory, but many people often forget that wifi is wireless. This means the signal from your router isn’t necessarily confined to the four walls of your house, apartment or business premises. You might never have given it a second thought, but it’s actually quite easy for neighbours to share a wifi connection – particularly if there is no password in place. This in itself isn’t just a bad thing on paper: if you get on with a neighbour, it might even seem beneficial to share a connection to save money – but what are the drawbacks?...

Online storage today is cheaper and easier than ever before – but temporary file sharing remains something of a technological headache. Many of the services we use and take for granted include a certain amount of free storage, and some will even include a sharing option. However, it’s very common to feel a pang of unease about how long this link will last for, whether the link will be shared beyond the intended recipient, or how secure the content is. Furthermore, even offline file sharing – passing a USB to a colleague for example - is not without its...

We all own precious family photographs, health and legal documents that are private to us. Once upon a time you could simply lock your home or build a wall of physical security around your business in order to keep your personal information safe. Over the last 20 years, our lives have increasingly moved online. A bolt on the door doesn’t protect our online data. That is why encryption matters. Online digital security matters to us all When it comes to the internet and networking, it’s not just our own personal computer or business ethernet which needs guarding. The very...

The hard drive or solid state drive of your computer holds a lot of sensitive information. This includes your account passwords, personal details, financial records and personal files and photos that no one but you should see. When you want to sell or dispose of your old computer, you need to wipe out all the sensitive data. This will protect you from identity theft. Simply deleting files and folders and emptying your recycle bin or formatting your computer does not wipe out all the data, however. You may no longer be able to access the deleted data, but...

The Deep Dark Web It’s very easy to make the comparison between the internet and the ocean: both are expansive bodies, ever evolving and changing. To take the analogy further, right now you are floating out on the very surface in the warm, safe waters. But there are things that lie beneath what you can access on your phone or your laptop, in the part of the internet known as the ‘deep web’ The name ‘deep web’ sounds ominous but, in fact, the term simply refers to sites and pages that cannot be accessed by traditional browsers. Like...