e-Security & Small Business Forum

e-Security is an important issue for the livelihood of every small business in Australia.

All throughout National e-Security Awareness Week, 5-12 June 2009, Open Forum will be featuring a range of expert bloggers in the field of e-Security, particularly for small business. The Hon. Senator Stephen Conroy MP, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, will be our first blogger in this special e-Security & Small Business forum.

Start by visiting www.staysmartonline.gov.au and signing up for their free E-security Alert Service.  Every Australian business should be taking advantage of this great new tool. It only takes a couple of minutes to register and you can customise your settings depending on whether you prefer to be notified through alerts, advisories, newsletters or fact sheets.

If you don’t know the difference between phising and fishing, don’t despair.

National e-Security Awareness Week isn’t just about raising awareness of the threats to your e-Security, it’s about making sure Australian small businesses are fully aware of what they can do to protect themselves.

All throughout National e-Security Awareness Week 2009, 5-12 June, Open Forum will be featuring a range of expert bloggers in the field of e-Security, particularly for small business. The Hon. Senator Stephen Conroy MP, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, will be our first blogger in this special e-Security & Small Business forum.

Start by visiting www.staysmartonline.gov.au and taking these 4 simple actions:

• Sign up for the free e-Security alert service
• Do the small business self-assessment
• Register for ScamWatch 
• Change your password

Even if you have paid a locksmith a fortune to secure your office, when you close up to go home at the end of the day, you still have to check the windows and doors are bolted and put the alarm on.

Maintaining your business’s e-Security is much the same. e-Security requires not only that you have the right systems in place, but constant vigilance to ensure they are properly maintained and utilised.

So make sure you not only have appropriate security software, but that they are also correctly installed, registered, patched and up to date.

e-Security is an important issue for the livelihood of every small business in Australia. Don’t be mistaken into thinking it’s only a problem for the big players. Whilst the biggest players can benefit from being able to employ the services of e-Security professionals, many small to medium enterprises, busy getting on with their core business, are leaving themselves vulnerable.

Throughout National e-Security Awareness week you can login and leave your comments and questions on our e-Security & Small Business forum for all the featured bloggers – and don’t forget to visit www.staysmartonline.gov.au.

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RELATED CONTENT:

• The simple steps to improving national e-security by Senator Stephen Conroy
• E-security Awareness: When it comes to Personal Information, it’s Security AND Privacy ‘cos there is no trade-off – by Malcolm Crompton
• Gaining Security Peace of Mind with just 10 minutes a Day – by Boaz Fischer
• Digital Economy or Wild West? – by Stephen Wilson
• Why and How to erase your hard drive, and protect your digital self? – by Craig Valli
• The New Tax Year is Coming – Don’t Make It the Year of Living Dangerously! – by Paul Ducklin
• Simple Steps to Small Business e-Security – by Prof Vijay Varadharajan
• Strong Authentication has Multiple Lines of Defence – by Fran Rosch
• e-Security Small Business Checkpoints – by Bhuvan Unhelkar
• What would happen if you lost your mobile phone today? – by Matthew Sorrell
• From the Vault National e-Security Awareness Week 2008 on Open Forum
• McAfee’s free Strategic Security Summit – Darling Harbour, 17 July 2009

0 Comments

1. 

   Leo Silver

   June 11, 2009 at 10:21 am

   Using Linux Live CD Installations for Better e-Security

   As noted else where in this forum, there is no single point solution to prevent PC's and other computers being compromised and careless behaviour by users can void any technological protection. However, the use of Linux Live CD's can virtually eliminate infection of PC's by virus's, trojans, key loggers and the like and so can be a very secure platform for users to conduct high risk activities such as Internet banking.

   A Live CD is a CD which contains a fully functioning Linux distribution with a full range of general use applications such as web-browsers, email clients and word-processing. They are available for most of the leading Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and are designed to allow users to trial the Linux system without having to install anything on their computer.

   From the users perspective, they will have access to a full function graphical desktop environment and a comprehensive application set but each time the system is started it loads completely form the CD and so is always exactly as originally supplied. It will run a little slower (particularly on an older machine) but you can be assured that each start is "clean".

    Why not give it a go, it's all open-source and free: http://www.ubuntu.com.

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