Google may Boost Email Security

Google has promised to consider improvements to the security of a number of its services including Google Mail following criticism from US security experts.

The group of 38 computer scientists called on Google to use a standard encryption protocol, known as HTTPS, which is commonly used in online banking services to protect data while in transit. Google offers HTTPS, which stands for Hypertext Tranfer Protocol Secure, as an option in Google Mail, but is disable by default.

"Google customers face a very real risk of data theft and snooping, even by unsophisticated attackers," the group wrote in an open letter to Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive.

Mobile Device Security Measures

Everyone is mobilizing. Our life, not just business but also personal, have become entwined with out cell phones (or is it vice versa?).

Cell phone isn't even the right term anymore for many people, who use their BlackBerrys, iPhones, and other smartphones almost as much as they use their computers. This make our mobile devices and the data they contain just as important as our laptops and desktops. Add a direct Internet connection (which very few people secure), and the likelihood of physical loss or theft, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

You may have some help from your security suite; some of these now include mobile features, although at this point we're not sure they're necessary.

However, there are a number of things you can do yourself to avoid a data-theft disater.

Samba over the Internet?

If Samba is so very convenient, you may wonder, why not use IPsec or some other VPN/encryption tool to secure its use on the Internet? This is actually possible. As it’s been a while since I covered IPsec in this space, and in the intervening years, IPsec support has been added to the Linux kernel, I just may end this series with a quick tutorial on doing Samba over IPsec.

However, Samba is a very “chatty” protocol—it generates a lot of packets even if you’re using it only for small files or shares. This causes problems not so much for your Internet link as for Samba performance:
Samba can be very sensitive to dropped or delayed packets, which is more likely in your modestly sized Internet uplink than over your exponentially bigger Local Area Network (LAN) fabric.

So, trying to get Samba working over IPsec may or may not be worth your time, and it may or may not warrant my covering it in this series of columns. Have no fear, one way or another, you can expect me to provide a tutorial on using the Linux kernel’s IPsec functionality in a future Paranoid Penguin column.