The Best Methods for Securing Your Computer

The vital importance of completing your perimeter of security for computer operations is underscored every day by the news we see of incursions that compromise, disrupt, and even destroy data networks and information systems. The fact that few, if any, of us is independent of these systems today makes it a responsibility of the highest order to secure them. Security for computer networks demands certainty. The principle is clear, but the challenge is great. Complexity makes the enormity of the task appear even more daunting.

Yet, complexity is the part of the problem that seems to be confronted best. It’s the simplicity of physical access to ports and connectors – the transfer points that turn our devices into networks and systems – that seems to attract the least attention in security for computer operations, even as organizations devote $170 billion annually to cyber security.

Software and programming defenses against Web- and cloud-transmitted threats to computer security get most of the attention – and the overwhelming bulk of that spending. To an extent, this is justified by the ever-changing shapes and thrusts of the threat. Malicious cyber-attacks, and the means to respond to them, spiral ever-upward like the most rapid arms race in history – an invisible arms race. It’s natural that security for computer networks should devote considerable attention there.

Two qualified thoughts, reservations if you will, follow that natural attention, though. First, the defenses against attacks from the cloud and the Web are almost all reactive. Programs and software respond to an attack after it is detected. And, while ingenious, such approaches to security for computer networks fail a key principle of combat. Keeping the initiative is a principle that won’t go away – never has – even as the means of combat evolved from rocks to spears to firearms to nuclear physics, and now to the electromagnetic spectrum.

Seizing the Initiative

One sector of the computer security perimeter is, in fact, easy to protect – that being the physical access to those computers themselves. Data ports and connectors, which are easy points of entry for malware, ransomware, and data intrusions, respond decisively to physical protection if provided with the right devices.

The data ports and connectors that unite computer systems and networks of every kind are all too often overlooked, as organizations think exclusively in terms of online threats and software solutions. A real, practical response to the ongoing cybersecurity threat includes measures that thoroughly secure those data ports and connectors. That means that the security measures for you to consider include devices that positively defeat efforts by unauthorized personnel to access ports and connectors.

Effective security for computer networks and devices must limit access even among trusted associates, because both research and real-world experience prove that casual contamination of data systems is at least as large a threat, or even larger, than the threat of intentional hacking or cyber-attack. Even the most trusted associates seem unable to resist plugging-in at work, and, in fact some of the most historically damaging cyber-attacks were deployed through seemingly innocent, “found” thumb drives. Strange and ironic, but true. The flash drives and smart phones of people within the organization are often the source of data system contamination.

Recognizing that the physical threat to computer security is at least as significant as the online threat, forward-thinking companies are taking back the initiative and closing the open front door of cyber-defense.

Certain and Simple Security for Computer Data Systems

You can count on The Connectivity Center to provide the computer security solutions that complete your cybersecurity perimeter, because our perspective includes all the exponential expansions of risk that resulted from universalizing people’s access to data. Our mission is to guard the physical points of entry that that turn PCs and workstations into networks and vital information systems. We protect the ports and connectors where the most damaging and historically impactful cyber-attacks were perpetrated.

Our Smart Keeper collection of computer and laptop security devices protect the vital data network connections that empower your information systems and still permit the controlled access that moves your enterprise forward day after day. Our Link Lock connectors and the Link Lock Hub secure your USB ports and network connections, and also lock your devices so that they cannot be removed without authorized access. You’ll find network security solutions by the hundreds from The Connectivity Center, including a variety of locking 4K high-speed cables. For unlocking them, we offer two kinds of keys, the Enterprise and Professional series of the Smart Keeper USB Port Lock Key.

As a convenient and efficient option, the Professional Series key offers an ergonomic, retractable housing with anti-static rubber grip, LED light for low visibility work areas, and dual-retractors – main and peripheral – for access to any angle of installation. The Professional Series provides effective control to reach port locks in confined spaces. Key patterns are strictly controlled, yet you can order duplicate keys to suit your own computer security authorization structure.

The systems of power generation, energy distribution, water purification and supply, transportation, to name only a few, and enterprises of every kind depend on the flow of data. The importance of this flow – uncontaminated and with controlled access – extends to all the operations that support the lives we live today. Private enterprise and public service alike share the same risk exposures, and fortunately can benefit equally from adding the physical dimension to cybersecurity.