Security

I made it a mission recently to be more secure with my data. For analog stuff, I bought a paper shredder (who’s going to want to steal maimed personal info? It’s easier to just move to the next schlub who doesn’t have a shredder!). This is phase two of my shaping up program, phase one was having all of my data always backed up.

I haven’t had a problem with security yet, but like having fresh backups, I don’t want to take chances. Being more secure doesn’t have to take a lot of time, it’s just knowing what you can do. And if you use a wireless network connection, the need to be secure is just that much greater. 

For digital stuff, I:

• Installed a SSL certificate on MobileTracker’s server so that when I log into MovableType, all the data is encrypted. This also lets me work in CPanel with peace of mind. Setting up a cert is a little tricky, but there are plenty of tutorials.
• Switched over to secure email, using an SSL connection again. This is an easy one click way to make your email secure, as long as your server supports it.
• Changed Transmit to use SFTP–I couldn’t believe I let that one slip by. Again, this was a simple one click change that can mean so much.
• Changed all of the passwords on the server (they were solid before, but this is post encryption just in case). Remember to have your passwords include capital and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. I would say anything at or above 10 characters is good enough for government work.

The next step is to change passwords for things like online banking and AIM. I’ll leave that for next week.

Does anyone have a favorite Mac OS X based file encryption program?