Hello everyone and thanks for joining us today. My name is Ryan Wheaton and I am the Director of Technology at SageFire, Inc. - the creators of KeepMore.net. I have over 15 years experience in the internet arena. I have spent most of my professional life helping small businesses with their technology solutions, implementing them in a cost-effective, easy to understand manner.

SageFire is a Certified Solution Provider specializing in helping small business owners' track their business financial activity using our online accounting, contact management and document storage solution. Our solution, KeepMore.net makes it simple for you track your business while maximizing your tax benefits.

I am passionate about helping small businesses understand and utilize technology to maximize their business, and let them focus on what matters most to them. My goal today is to help you, the small business owner, understand most of what is going on in the realm of the internet, and offer some tips to help protect yourself and keep your business running smoothly.
I don't mean to scare you. Most of what I present here are things that you've probably already heard, or may just be common sense to most of you, but I hope to explain them in plain English, and that you walk away from this workshop with a strong understanding of the topics presented.

"Security" once evoked images of gold and cash protected by armed guards and steel bars. On the internet, information - not gold - is the precious resource. Locks and keys have given way to encryption, and steel bars to firewalls.

The Web lets you exchange data in seconds, but it also creates the risk of spoofing, interception, and tampering. That's why basic knowledge of things like privacy, encryption, digital certificates, and security are essential to everyone online, whether you're implementing an e-commerce site, posting confidential information on the internet, using your credit card to shop on the Web, or using KeepMore.net.

When you do business on the Internet, you should have the same concerns as you do when you use a catalog to shop over the telephone.

Impersonation: Is the business that takes my order authentic?
Eavesdropping: Could someone "listen in" to my order and steal my credit card number?

In the real world, you often give your credit card to cashiers or waiters, and you give out your account number over the phone when placing an order. Posting confidential information on the Internet is no more dangerous than these practices. In fact, it is often more secure to give out your account number over the Internet, because many sites work with your browser software to encode your transaction so if outside parties intercept it, they won't be able to read it.

Security threats are countered with a technology called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). SSL is a set of rules followed by computers connected to the Internet. These rules include encryption - which guards against eavesdropping, data integrity - which assures that your communications aren't tampered with during transmission, and authentication - which verifies that the party actually receiving your communication is who it claims to be.

When mailing to unknown parties, posting to newsgroups, mailing lists, chat rooms and other public spaces on the 'net, or publishing a web page that mentions your e-mail address, it is best to do this from a "side" account, some pseudonymous or simply alternate address, and to use your main or preferred address only on small, members-only lists and with known, trusted individuals. Addresses that are in public spaces can be easily discovered by spammers (online junk mailers) and then added to their list of targets. If your public "throw away" address gets spammed enough to become annoying, you can simply kill it off, and start a new one. Your friends, boss, etc., will still know your "real" address.

The speed of Internet communication is often mirrored in rapid online acquaintanceships and friendships. But it is important to realize that you don't really know who these people are or what they are like in real life. A thousand miles away, you don't have friends-of-friends or other references about this person. Be also wary of face-to-face meetings. If you and your new e-friend wish to meet in person, do it in a public place. Bringing a friend along can also be a good idea. One needn't be paranoid, but one should not be an easy mark, either. Some personal information you might wish to withhold until you know someone much better would include your full name, place of employment, phone number, and street address (among more obvious things like credit card numbers, etc.) Needless to say, such information should not be put on personal home pages

Beware sites that offer some sort of reward or prize in exchange for your contact information or other personal details.

There's a very high probability that they are gathering this information for direct marketing purposes. In many cases your name and address are worth much more to them because they can sell it to other marketers (who can do the same in turn...) than what you are (supposedly) getting from them. Be especially wary of sweepstakes and contests. You probably won't win, but the marketer sure will if you give them your information.

Never submit a credit card number or other highly sensitive personal information without first making sure your connection is secure (encrypted with SSL). In any browser, look at the URL (Web address) line - a secure connection will begin "https://" intead of "http://". If you are at page that asks for such information but shows "http://" try adding the "s" yourself and hitting enter to reload the page. If you get an error message that the page or site does not exist, this probably means that the company is so clueless - and careless with your information and your money - that they don't even have Web security. Take your business elsewhere.

Spyware and malware are software that gets installed on your system without your consent or even your knowledge, causes major headaches, and costs precious computing cycles and resources. While these are almost never fundamentally harmful to the computer itself (outside of dragging its performance to a woeful crawl), they're more of a threat to you, the user. Spyware can log your actions on your machine, including the sites you visit, the e-mail you send, and send it to unscrupulous parties. While most of it is harmless, or at least however harmless you think meticulously tracking someone's internet usage is and reporting it to advertisers can be, it can be an ongoing nuisance and can severely hamper your enjoyment of your computer. For more information on Spyware, read Microsoft's article, "What is Spyware" : Link

Viruses take care of anything that spyware and malware don't, and it can damage your system, possibly even irreparably. They can corrupt your operating system installation, corrupt your data, and damage your hardware.

These two classes of software are responsible for 90% (arbitrary figure) of the computing problems I come across in my personal and work life. Spyware and Viruses are such a problem that many computer repair shops don't even have to actually do anything in particular to fix infected computers - they can run software and scripts that remove the harmful software from an afflicted machine..

I'm going to tell you something that just might blow your mind. You don't NEED subscription based spyware/malware/anti-virus software.

If that didn't blow your mind, then how about this - you don't NEED to spend money to protect yourself.

The guys at the computer store are going to try and sell you on software packages you don't need. Using a basic, free anti-virus program that runs in the background is a good way to keep your system safe from any virus. Here is a list of three popular free antivirus programs for your PC:

• Avast! Home Edition: Link


• AVG Free: Link


• AntiVir Personal Edition: Link

• Ad Aware: Link


• Spybot Search and Destroy: Link