Security on the Internets... Do I need a VPN?

Recently I found myself listening to an old friend. Leo Laporte, for those of you who do not know Leo Laporte (thanks to wikipedia) has worked on technology-related broadcasting projects, including Dvorak on Computers in January 1991 (co-hosted with technology writer John C. Dvorak), and Laporte on Computers on KGO Radio and KSFO in San Francisco.

In 1998, Laporte created and co-hosted The Screen Savers and the original version of Call for Help on the cable and satellite network ZDTV(later TechTV).

Laporte was the host of the daily television show The Lab with Leo Laporte, recorded in Vancouver, Canada. The program had formerly been known as Call for Help when it was recorded in the U.S. and Toronto. The series aired on G4 Canada, on the HOW TO Channel in Australia, on several of Canada's Citytv affiliates, and on Google Video. On March 5, 2008, Laporte confirmed on net@nite that The Lab with Leo Laporte had been canceled by Rogers Communications. The HOW TO Channel refused to air the remaining episodes after it was announced the show had been canceled.

He hosts a weekend technology-oriented talk radio program show titled Leo Laporte: The Tech Guy. The show, started on KFI AM 640 (Los Angeles), is now syndicated through Premiere Radio Networks. Laporte also appears semi-regularly on Showbiz Tonight, Live with Kelly, World News Now, and previously with Bill Handel on Friday mornings on KFI. He has also been a guest technology speaker on local talk radio programs in the U.S. and Canada.

I had my first encounters with Leo being a pretty big fan of The Screen Savers back in high school when I was in my computer gaming rig building days. Recently I was listening to his podcast The Tech Guy and he was answering a question from a caller about using a VPN for secure browsing, which is going to bring me to the meat and potatoes of this post, should you be using one? As with most tech questions, the answers is, as it most always is, that depends.

Ok, so, briefly (with links a plenty to wikipedia) a VPN is a virtual private network that extends a private network across a public network, such as the Internet. It enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network, and thus are benefiting from the functionality, security and management policies of the private network. A VPN is created by establishing a virtual point-to-point connection through the use of dedicated connections, virtual tunneling protocols, or traffic encryption.

VPN technology is also used by individual Internet users to secure their wireless transactions, to circumvent geo-restrictions and censorship, and to connect to proxy servers for the purpose of protecting personal identity and location.

So this brings me back to my earlier statement of that depends. What are you doing with your internet connection? I myself tend to be a pretty big fan of VPNs for personal browsing. I don't like the idea of my ISP sniffing my traffic and figuring out what I am doing, and then adjusting my bandwidth accordingly. So what do you use your internet connection for? If you are a big streamer (hulu, netflix, etc.) and/or you play a lot of video games that use high amounts of bandwidth (eg. call of duty, battlefield, destiny, or any MMORPG) chances are your bandwidth is already being throttled without your knowledge. check out this article that shows companies like Comcast and other ISPs that have been intentionally slowing down your speeds, and this one from PC World about ISPs that are known to throttle your bandwidth. Now if you are doing other activities that could potentially violate copyrights of other companies (eg. downloading tv, music, or movies) your ISP can see that as well. As a matter of fact Charter Communications sends you a nastygram if you use bittorrent to share any type of file, be it legal or otherwise.

It is for these reasons, my friends, that I can say yes, in this day in age where the privacy vs. security battle is raging hotter than ever, I would most definitely lease a VPN, which by the way, can be leased for as little as $4.95/ month. It is a fairly cheap service that will allow you to browse and stream your favorite services at full speeds, and keep your ISP from being able to see what exactly it is that you are doing, and no sniffers out there on the public internet can identify your traffic either.

Feel free to comment your thoughts and if there is any interest on this I can do some follow up articles on how to connect a VPN to a wireless router to enable all devices in your home to browse the internet securely!

Being 30 and changing careers

As I made my decision to leave the US Army, I was struggling to deal with the many options that were laid out in front of me. Should I stay? Or should I go? The vast majority of my superiors, bosses, and peers were all begging me to stay. "You're the subject matter expert on XYZ!" They would all say or "you're going to just leave after 10 years? It's only another 10 until you can retire!" "What a silly concept!" I would always think to myself. "10 years? Do you have any idea how long 10 years is?" Could I really subject myself to another 10 years of month-long training cycles, pre-deployment preparations, and countless could nights in the woods of who-knows-where? The first 10 years had already seen three combat deployments, two to Iraq and one to Afghanistan, as well as a failed marriage and a son who until recently lived 1,500 miles away whom I did not see very frequently as a result of my job. When I was injured in Afghanistan (I had torn my labrum in my left shoulder) I was promised that I would be taken care of. As it came time for me to make my decision it was almost easily made for me. "Take care of me?" I thought as I laid by myself in a hospital bed, post surgery, "They couldn't even care enough to submit my paperwork on time!" It was true, I had filled out several request forms to defer my reporting date to Fort Polk, Louisiana by 60 days, two forms to be exact, both of which were lost by the battalion S-1 (that's human resources for you non-military types) not to mention the cancellation request I had put in for the assignment, which was approved by my battalion commander, yet subsequently denied by his boss, the brigade commander. The people who had promised to take care of me, had all but made my decision for me. Several days into my post-surgical recovery time I received a call from my big boss, the company First Sergeant, who was explaining to me that I was a failure to report at my gaining unit at Fort Polk. "Well I guess they didn't process that final request from before I went into surgery." I thought to myself. "What are my options?" I asked the First Sergeant. He took his time explaining that my only options were to attempt another deferment request with a memorandum justifying it's lateness, report immediately to the assignment in Louisiana, or sign a DCSS. A DCSS is a form in the military, the acronym stands for "Declination of Continued Selected Service" and what that means is your career is over, once signed the DCSS prevents you from being promoted, or re-enlisting, after signing you are basically just riding out whatever amount of time you have on your contract and will receive and honorable discharge, granted that you can behave for the amount of time remaining on said contract. I was so frustrated by this point, I agreed to come into work and sign the DCSS, and boom, just like that. 10 years, over.

The next thought that came into my head as I went back into work about two weeks later, was "what the hell am I going to do now?" I would soon be turning 30, and the past 10 years of being an infantry soldier, who's job is to close with and destroy the enemy by direct or indirect fire, had provided me with no college education and no experience to draw on for the civilian job market. Looks like I am going back to school!

Use of Social Media by Industry leading Tech Firms

There are many Tech giants that have been around for a long time, but does establishment of a dominating presence in the field preclude them from embracing new technologies? Absolutely not.

One giant firm that we will look at is Cisco. Cisco has been long established as one of the industry leaders in the communications and networking field, and as such they have embraced the use of social media and the web to inform people of their new technologies and new emerging trends in the field. This is extremely evident by the fact that they have over 12 twitter accounts tweeting different topics for different areas of interest for the products that they produce and trends and support topics, all of which can be seen here: https://twitter.com/Cisco https://twitter.com/CiscoSecurity https://twitter.com/CiscoCollab https://twitter.com/ciscoDC https://twitter.com/Cisco_Mobility https://twitter.com/TelePresence https://twitter.com/CiscoIT https://twitter.com/Cisco_Support https://twitter.com/CiscoLive https://twitter.com/CiscoPartners https://twitter.com/LearningatCisco as well as several more accounts. Using all these different accounts is very effective for them and it makes it easy for users of twitter to follow specific topics of interest, learning, or developing tech. They also have presences on Facebook for their Network Academy for students and a Corporate Facebook.

Another company that we will look at is Samsung. Samsung has been in the US markets for a long time, and as that time has gone on, it seems that they have only expanded the fields that they are in. Everything from televisions to home appliances and to the cell and smart phone, there are many different divisions of this Tech giant, but do they use social media effectively? Their presences on Twitter and Facebook seem to mirror each other and they use the platforms concurrently to DJ trending tech topics within the company. The same goes for their Google+ account as it mirrors the Facebook and twitter accounts. For such a large company I was expecting Samsung USA to have more of a solid presence on social media, and I don't think that they make as effective a use of social media as some of the other companies that compete with Samsung. it could be beneficial for them to have separate accounts for their different product divisions or to make more effective use of the differing social media tools.

In conclusion These two companies have been involved in the US Tech market for a very long time but have two very different approaches to the use of social media, which is more effective? I suppose that all depends on the type of information that you are looking for from your favorite tech company!

Why I am at MATC

I am enrolled at MATC in the IT - Network Specialist program. The reason that I chose to go to school at MATC is that it is one of the only technical colleges in the region that offers this program. I was previously enrolled at UW Stout in a similar program, but ultimately decided to serve in the US Army. I was in the Army for about 10 years but grew very dissatisfied with the direction that my career in the Army was going and I decided to shift gears and pursue a career into one of my passions computers and Information Technology.