NSA Releases Best Practices For Securing Your Home Network

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NSA Releases Best Practices For Securing Your Home Network > National Security Agency/Central Security Service > Article

Thoughts?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Alex B, jburk07

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Lot’s of good information but realistically, how many home users know even half of what’s in the report? And of those who know the half of it how many have the working knowledge to implement the suggestions? And of those who don’t have the working knowledge how many are going to go to the effort to learn it?

Does the NSA spend at least as much time and effort guiding software software and hardware vendors/manufacturers in best practices? Why, for example is it still legal to sell a router with push button WPS connection capabilities? The government (at least in the US) regulates all kinds of things, why not regulate best practices in the computer industry?

I’m all for consumers knowing and learning about the devices they use, but it’s likely not going to happen for a large majority of them. The computer industry should spend more time writing software that requires fewer patches and making hardware that’s more fail-safe. Various industries are fined if they exceed emission limits. Why not fine software vendors if they sell software that requires more than ‘x’ patches per month. I’m sure the computer industry would squawk endlessly about being regulated just like the automotive industry did when they were forced to make safer cars with fewer emissions, but safer cars with fewer emissions are now being made.

I realize device security is a complex problem and that my solutions are easier said than done. But this is a complicated world and to let the problem roll downhill to the consumer seems to be the same as kicking the can down the road, however convenient that might be. All parties involved need to step up and it seems that many of the high tech companies are far more interested in prying money out of people’s wallets than in making the computer world a better place.

Those are (some) of my thoughts. 🙂

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Lars220, bassmanzam, Alex B, oldfry, Alex5723

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I’m already doing all that, with the exception of IoT—I don’t have any and don’t want any.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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