Many businesses are now using the standard office computer in factory facilities, to control production. The problem is a standard computer, no matter if it’s a desktop or tower is not designed for anything else but an office.

Once you remove the computer from its safe office environment, it is extremely venerable, no air conditioning just dirt, dust, fluid and abuse.

When businesses issue computers to the shop floor, they have two options; to purchase and install dedicated Industrial Computers or to purchase protective PC enclosures. Let us look at these in more detail.

1. Dedicated Industrial Computers, these normally require expensive software and a maintenance agreement setting up, were an engineer comes to site to service the computer, making sure the software is up to date and running as it should be. The problem lies when the Industrial Computer fails, it could take days for an engineer to visit site and repair the hardware, costing as much as $20,000 per hour in lost production, this coupled with the expensive initial set up costs are sometimes restrictive.

2. PC enclosures, these are manufactured from steel and will accommodate a wide range of computer hardware, so they can actually grow with your business, should you wish to change monitors or migrate from PCs to thin clients or small factor PCs. Now they are several types of cooling for these units, the most cost effective is the filtered fan units, then there are cooling tubes, these are similar to air conditioning units without any moving parts, so they do not break down and are cheaper than air conditioning units.  Read more... (528 words, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

Advances in computer technology is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it affords us quick and easy access to numerous conveniences such as bank statements, favorite shopping centers, school and health records, and more. On the other hand, it can also grant the same access to those who arenâ??t supposed to get it. Although itâ??s a rare occurrence, hacking has become the biggest criminal nuisance in computer history.

 

Make no bones about it. Thereâ??s nothing innocent or cute about the hacker. Todayâ??s hackers arenâ??t the pimply-faced teen rebels that you might be thinking of. Instead, this generation of hackers are grown individuals who are more than likely earning a living by stealing the identities of innocent, law abiding individuals and then selling those identities to others who want to slip by the system. And the only protection against these seedy people is prevention.

 

Computer security couldnâ??t be more important than it is today and thatâ??s why weâ??ve taken the time to introduce it to you.  You can reduce the probability of experiencing identity theft by making your computer as hacker-proof as possible. All thatâ??s needed is a little software and a lot of common sense.

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Itâ??s important to take the precautions to protect you and your products from information theft these days, because itâ??s getting easier and easier for people to share digital products.  Information theft is a type of computer security risk and itâ??s defined as stealing an individualâ??s personal or confidential information.  When this is stolen this can cause as much damage, or possibly more then hardware or software theft.  Business or home users are both at risk of information theft.

One example is a malicious individual stealing credit cards so they can make unauthorized purchases on another personâ??s account. If information is transmitted over a network then it has a very high chance for malicious users to intercept the information. Every computer in the path of your data can see what you send, and they can also see what you send.  A lot of companies try to stop information from being stolen by applying some user identification and authentication controls. These constraints are best for protecting computers along a companyâ??s premise.

However, to protect information on the Internet and on networks, companies use a handful of encryption methods.  Encryption refers to the process of converting data into an unreadable form. One type of encryption software is Obfuscated code which is a programming language that is extremely hard to read. Encrypted data is like any other data because you can send it through a lot of options, but to read it you must decrypt or decipher it into a more readable form. Throughout the encryption process, the unencrypted data or input is known as plaintext and the encrypted data, or output is known as ciphertext.  To encrypt information, the programmer converts the plaintext into ciphertext using some type of encryption key.  Read more... (1075 words, estimated 4:18 mins reading time)

With the number of identity theft victims growing every day, it is no surprise that computer security is a big concern for most computer users. With the increase in attacks on computers and theft of sensitive information,firewalls and virus protection programs have gone from being rarely used on home computers to being things even the most technologically challenged users want to have installed. After all, noone wants to be the main character of a true life made for t.v. story about hackers breaking into a family’s home computer, stealing their information, and then wiping the whole system out with a nasty virus or trojan program.

If you are one of the computer users who doesn’t worry about computer security, it is time to start worrying. Without protection, your computer is as open to attack as a bank that leaves its doors unlocked after it closes. Without virus protection and a firewall, it is just a matter of time until you are the victim of an attack. Hopefully, it won’t be serious enough that you have to buy a new computer, or even worse, try to repair your credit after someone stole your identity.

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