Trevor Parker

Tech enthusiast, amateur photographer, and random blogger.

One of my biggest frustrations with cybersecurity is how easy it is for almost anyone to feel like an outsider.

People typically bump into the world of cybersecurity when their data is stolen, when their accounts are compromised, when security controls or requirements change — all usually frustrating or at least inconvenient. And in depictions in popular culture, "hackers" tend to take the form of some kind of stereotype in a dark room either portrayed as a heroes or villains who, themselves, are some kind of outsider.

Twitter is going through some things.

We seem to be at a critical point in the internet's growth. Twitter is having trouble (or is finally getting fixed, depending on which side of the fence you're on). In any case, the idea of a large social networking platform being largely controlled by one person should be frightening to anyone.

You may agree with the person in charge now, but that person can change over time or someone else can come along and take charge. And social networking platforms likely have the ability to broadly shape and influence sentiment and opinion in subtle ways.

Not great stuff. How do we make it better?

I've often toyed with writing a post about things I use on a daily basis (see my Personal Security Tools post which, admittedly, contains a few things I don't use on a daily basis), but never quite convinced myself that the lists would be substantial or unique enough to write about.

I figure that it gets exhausting to read about really geeky things like command line tools and server technology all the time, so I hope that these posts might be a little more useful if they speak to a slightly more conventional audience.

So, here it is -- and on Tax Day no less! With one exception, these are all tools that anyone with a computer can readily use.

Internet and system security is a growing interest of mine. There are numerous ways to protect yourself and some really great tools to help you.

I asked myself what tools I would recommend to a friend or family member interested in securing their data and Internet activities. Some of these are for the more paranoid or technically-inclined, while others are practical to anyone using a computer.

Securing your site's web traffic with SSL is more than just slapping an SSL certificate on your server. Times have changed. Things have gotten more nuanced as browsers have aged, ciphers have weakened, and attackers have gotten more creative.

For starters, you'll want to choose a set of ciphers that provide a high assurance of security without neglecting visitors on older browsers.