I have reclaimed my blog from the grips of everyday life. It’s been over 6 months since my last post and I would like to share my ventures with a focus on almost anything technology related.. So much for focus.
In the past I have written about General tech tips, Raspberry Pi projects, Linux, and Home technology integration. Over the last 6 months I have explored some new passions; information security (practics and application), HTML5, and social networking analytics.
Getting Social
Not too long ago I discovered that using Google Drive anyone can host their own web page written in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or a combination of the three. Google makes it real simple to do this and has a help page explaining how the process works located HERE. After my discovery I set out to do just that. Since I have no working knowledge of any of the three supported languages, I chose HTML after a good friend of mine made a comment that HTML5 should be a bigger deal than it is right now. Luckily there is a great deal of free online resources for learning different programming languages, I chose to use Code Academy. For testing purposes, I created a very simple page that displays my Bitly analytics for Bitly link I created that takes a user to my About Me landing page. If I wanted to I could create my own customer dashboard that displays information from multiple sites on one page.
My Bitly adventure is about the extent of social networking analytics adventure, but it is proof of practice on how Bitly can track the performance of a link and gauge customer interaction and interest.
Getting Secure
I have gotten really interested in information security over the past year or so, but never took a in-depth look. I am in no fashion a infosec professional or expert, but I would like to think of myself as a infosec advocate; someone who spreads awareness of its importance and some of the basics. I thought it would be best to focus on individual users instead of enterprise wide security practices because I can try out methods myself. One of the most effective ways to secure any online account is through the use of two factor authentication. Two Factor Authentication or (2FA) is best described in an article on Life Hacker: “two-factor authentication is a simple feature that asks for more than just your password. It requires both “something you know” (like a password) and “something you have” (like your phone). After you enter your password, you’ll get a second code sent to your phone, and only after you enter it will you get into your account.” (Gordon, 2013).
Last Pass
Taking the user security a step further I decided to follow Life Hacker once again and use their step by step guide for using Last pass combined with Sesame to create a near hack-proof password system. Sesame is a extension of Last pass and uses a flash drive as a 2FA device making Last Pass unusable without the flash drive. This worked out great for me, but I found it very difficult to set up accounts that already had 2FA in use (specifically Google) so I would recommend temporarily disabling any 2FA before setting up Last Pass. Last Pass with Sesame
Learning opportunities are everywhere
Moving forward I may focus my interests, but with so many opportunities to learn, I’m just having fun learning what I can and when I can.