An Insight to firewalls

Introduction

Firewalls are computer security systems that protect your office/home PCs or your network from intruders, hackers & malicious code. Firewalls protect you from offensive software that may come to reside on your systems or from prying hackers 

What exactly are firewalls?

Firewalls are software programs or hardware devices that filter the traffic that flows into you PC or your network through a internet connection. They sift through the data flow & block that which they deem (based on how & for what you have tuned the firewall) harmful to your network or computer system.

How do they work?

Firewalls are setup at every connection to the Internet, therefore subjecting all data flow to careful monitoring. Firewalls can also be tuned to follow "rules". These Rules are simply security rules that can be set up by yourself or by the network administrators to allow traffic to their web servers, FTP servers, Telnet servers, thereby giving the computer owners/administrators immense control over the traffic that flows in & out of their systems or networks.

Rules will decide who can connect to the internet, what kind of connections can be made, which or what kind of files can be transmitted in out. Basically all traffic in & out can be watched and controlled thus giving the firewall installer a high level of security & protection.

Firewall logic

Firewalls use 3 types of filtering mechanisms:

• Packet filtering or packet purity
  Data flow consists of packets of information and firewalls analyze these packets to sniff out offensive or unwanted packets depending on what you have defined as unwanted packets.
  
• Proxy
  Firewalls in this case assume the role of a recipient & in turn sends it to the node that has requested the information & vice versa.
  
• Inspection
  In this case Firewalls instead of sifting through all of the information in the packets, mark key features in all outgoing requests & check for the same matching characteristics in the inflow to decide if it relevant information that is coming through.

Types of Firewall

• Software firewalls
  New generation Operating systems come with built in firewalls or you can buy a firewall software for the computer that accesses the internet or acts as the gateway to your home network.
  
• Hardware firewalls
  Hardware firewalls are usually routers with a built in Ethernet card and hub. Your computer or computers on your network connect to this router & access the web.
  

Summary

Firewalls are a must have for any kind of computer usage that go online. They protect you from all kinds of abuse & unauthorised access like trojans that allow taking control of your computers by remote logins or backdoors, virus or use your resources to launch DOS attacks.

Some of the firewall products that you may want to check out are:

• McAfee Internet Security
• Microsoft Windows Firewall
• Norton Personal Firewall
• Trend Micro PC-cillin
• ZoneAlarm Security Suit

5 ways to turn your USB pen drive into the ultimate powerhouse

 

Any external USB storage drive, be it a pen drive or a hard drive, is used primarily for the reason - storage. But there is more to it.

1. Install a full-featured apps suite
Using a full-featured apps suite is one of the most common ways to get the most out of your USB pen drive. These suite of tools can help you run just about any software right from that small piece of hardware. They are basically a collection of portable versions of popular tools, organised in an impressive manner. The most popular among these is portableapps. Another good one is winpenpack.
2. Use it as a bootable device
Using a CD/DVD to install an operating system is out of fashion, apart from being less convenient. Use your pen drive to create a bootable version of an OS you are likely to use each day. You could also use it to boot multiple operating systems.
3. Use it to store data safely
Got a lot of pen drives lying around? Why not use some of them as an encrypted storage of confidential data. Most of the popular encryption tools, like TrueCrypt, offer a way to encrypt an external drive. If you want to store and use passwords from it, powerful password managers like LastPass and KeePass offer portable versions to help you carry them around.
4. Use Windows To Go
Not many know that the Enterprise version of Windows 8 can be run completely off a USB pen drive. Of course the drive should be 32 GB or larger but then those aren't hard to come by these days. This isn't useful to the everyday Windows user but many business owners would find it interesting and might just consider handing over their employees such Windows To Go enabled drives so that they could work in a familiar environment from any computer.
5. Use it to create a rescue drive
Last but by no means the least is an option to make your pen drive the ultimate saviour. Most of the anti-virus and anti-spyware tools like AVG and BitDefender offer a way to create rescue CDs or drives for saving a PC that's non-functional and infected with malware. You may also consider using an all-in-one recovery tool like ultimate boot cd.

 

The downfall of Nokia - 11 reasons why they are doing so badly

Nokia has been in trouble for some time now – even before Stephen Elop’s leaked memo – and so far things haven’t improved. Here are 11 reasons why. 



1. Symbian is a sinking ship - the downfall of Nokia

Times have changed and Android and iOS have blown Symbian out of the water. It is still desperately clinging on in some parts of the world but for most it just doesn’t come close to today’s expected level of standard.



2. Windows 7 OS may be too little too late - the downfall of Nokia
Microsoft was even later in latching on to the smartphone advancements than Nokia, and that’s saying something. So far, few consumers have been keen to switch to a Windows Phone 7 device. In this case two wrongs will make one huge wrong.



3. MeeGo is a NoGo - the downfall of Nokia

Back in June it was announced that the Linux-based OS would run on the flagship N9, but it didn't take off. There is nothing majorly wrong with MeeGo, it is just seen as a stopgap between Symbian and Windows Phone 7.



4. Stephen Elop has done nothing to help - the downfall of Nokia

Nokia CEO Stepehen Elop made things worse. An internal memo, which Elop sent to staff, leaked in February. In the memo, Elop uses the metaphor of a burning oil station, referring to Nokia "pouring gasoline on our own burning platform". This confirmed just how much trouble Nokia is in.



5. The latest designs look like guess work - the downfall of Nokia

From odd colour choices to varying screen sizes, Nokia seem to have gone for a hit and miss tactic. A more considered, researched and developed approach to hardware would improve Nokia’s chances of revival.



6. Failed to live up to its own hype (new models unpopular) - the downfall of Nokia

Nokia has deployed heavy marketing to try to boost sales and popularity of its handsets. From the sheep social network advert to posters plastered all over bus stops, Nokia is setting itself up for a fall, because its current crop just doesn’t improve the user's experience.



7. Revenue is substantially below estimates - the downfall of Nokia

The Finnish firm used to be a hugely profitable company, once being the only firm in the world that had a turnover which exceeded the taxation revenue of the country it was based in.



8. Can’t shake the 3310 - the downfall of Nokia

The 3310 is the handset that springs to mind whenever anyone mentions Nokia. It revolutionised mobile phones when it was first released and just rode the wave of success, doing little to progress designs especially when the iPhone was released. It is now left to regret resting on its laurels.



9. Ovi store never really took off - the downfall of Nokia

Say the word App and consumers, as well as developers, immediately think of iTunes or the Android Marketplace. In comparison, Ovi's selection is nowhere near as good and those apps that are similar to offerings from Android and Apple don’t run as well on Nokia devices, with crashing being a frequently reported problem.



10. Blackberry dominates the enterprise - the downfall of Nokia

Businesses that once used to hand out thousands of Nokias to their employees have now turned to Blackberrys or iPhones. The improved functionality and reliability dealt a killer blow to Nokia and it has a lot of work to do if it hopes to regain its place in the offices.



11. Could be slow to react to future changes - the downfall of Nokia

It’s taken Nokia two years to admit it has been slow in reacting to the changes in the sector and few people would be surprised if it is still playing catch up for the foreseeable future. Apple and Android certainly won’t be waiting for it to catch up, so the gap will only continue to widen.

Blue eye technology

What is blue eye technology?

The blue eye technology aims at creating computational machines that have perceptual and sensory ability like that of human beings.

How can we make computers see and feel?

Blue eyes uses sensing technology to identify a user’s actions and to extract key information.

Information is then analysed to determine the user’s physical, emotional, or informational state.

The complex solution for human-operator monitoring

<·    Visual attention monitoring

<·     Physiological condition

<·     Operator’s position detection

<·     Wireless data acquisition using Bluetooth

<·     Recorded data playback

Designing

A personal area network for linking all the operators and the supervising systems

Two major units:

<·       DAU(Data Acquisition Unit)

<·       CSU(Central System Unit)

Features of DAU

<·     Lightweight

<·     Runs on battery (low power consumption)

<·     Easy to use: does not disturb operator working

<·     ID cards for operator authorisation

<·     Voice transmission using hardware PCM codec

CSU components

<·      Connection manager- main task to perform low-level Bluetooth communication

<·      Data analysis module- performs the analysis of raw sensor data in order to obtain information about system’s physiological condition.

<·      Data logger module- provides support for storing the monitored data

<·      Visualisation module- provides user interface for the supervisors

CSU features

<·    Connection management

<·    Data processing

<·    Visualisation

<·     Data recording

<·     Access verification

Current developments

<·    Blue eye- emotional mouse

<·    Magic pointing

<·    Blue eye enabled  suitor

Conclusion

In near future, ordinary household devices such as televisions, ovens, refrigerators, etc. Would be able to do their jobs when we look at them and speak to them.

Future applications of blue eye technology is limitless.