Man, Sometimes This Stuff Is Just Weird...

[Samuel T Cogley]

58 minutes ago, crenca said:

I'm going to swim upstream and say that for many home networks, paying for the hardware/subscription of a border firewall/security device is probably not money well spent.  Your just not that interesting to hackers, and your ISP supplied/rented modem/router and OS firewall is "good enough".  Any malware you get is likely because of your own online behavior, and not an external attack.  Any problems with basic IP infrastructure you are likely to have are due to your cheap chi-net gear, not "hackers".

 

I put a firewall in front of my CPE and just disabled the CPE firewall.  I just don't trust my ISP.

[Samuel T Cogley]

4 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

Comcast??

 

AT&T

[Samuel T Cogley]

Regarding password complexity, I have come up with something that is fun, hard to guess, easy to remember, and pretty secure.

 

Adjective Noun Adverb Verb

 

Like:

 

Silly salamander silently slithers

 

You can dress it up with 3 for e and @ for a, etc.  Sprinkle a little punctuation, and you've got a memorable but un-guessable password.

[Samuel T Cogley]

2 minutes ago, mansr said:

They'd be even harder to guess if you didn't tell everybody on the internet the pattern you use to generate them.

 

There are some instances where a memorable password is useful (like SSH private keys).  But for other things, I use randomly generated passwords in a password vault.  I like Password Safe.

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 minute ago, AudioDoctor said:

I will share a tip with all of you.

 

1PassWord

 

Use one master password, and it will create completely random passwords and remember them for you, fill them where needed. Including your router. It's definitely worth the small fee.

 

While this one is popular, I prefer a solution that is cross platform, does not use a web browser, and does not store passwords in the Cloud.  In my experience, it's just not a good security practice to use a browser-based password vault.

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

There were thousands per day from the PRC alone.  Very few people in the health field who are associated with a group practice or hospital, even a small rural/suburban one, are too obscure for hacking attempts anymore.  It's nothing personal, it's just a bunch of automated stuff crawling the web, devices, etc., looking for vulnerabilities.

 

And vulnerabilities are often exploited not by bots hammering your firewall, but by phish emails that compromise your network from the inside, then leverage known exploits.  Bots not only attempt to beat down your firewall, they also are spamming you 24/7/365.