I guess this year’s excitement happened last night, as I discovered this morning when I went to get in the car to run a few errands. Sometime after midnight my cars were broken into. Everything that was in the glove compartment and the middle console was pulled out and dumped onto the seats and floorboards. But nothing seems to be missing. I don’t leave anything valuable in the cars anyway. But it is disconcerting to think that someone would violate my property like that.

My neighbor and I are considering putting a video surveillance system in place that would encompass her driveway and mine, and also the front and rear doors of the houses. We are both concerned that whoever broke into my cars might get a little bolder and try to get into our houses. She knows of a place online that sells audio video surveillance equipment and it’s not as expensive as I feared.

IT Planet has a good variety of cameras and systems that can meet just about any need, from worried homeowners like us to small business owners concerned about shoplifting and robberies. I like the way you can either order online from their site, send an email with questions or call them at 866-468-6044 and talk to one a customer sales representative.

We’re going to get together in a little while at her house and talk it over again.

I’ve heard a lot of people fussing about bugs in the VISTA program, but to be honest, I’ve been using VISTA for over a year and I love it. Knock on wood – I’ve not had any problems with it. There have been a couple of odd things, but usually when I restart the computer everything is back to the way it should be.

I think my only concern with the VISTA and the way I use my home PC is that sometimes I like to take a break and step away from the computer, leaving multiple windows open so I can resume my work later. But a few times when I come back to the computer, it has automatically downloaded updates and has restarted the computer on its own. So all my windows get closed and that ticks me off.

1. Get off Lists – go to the website for the Direct Marketing Association, dmachoice.org and click on “Remove my name from those lists.” This is free, takes about 4 months to see the full impact of reduced unwanted mail, and stays in effect for 3 years.

2. Don’t Get on New Lists – marketers build new lists from product registration forms, contests and sweepstakes. Don’t fill those out.

3. Protect Your Identity – Register at optoutprescreen.com to opt out of prescreened credit offers. These offers come from the four credit bureaus, Experian, Transunion, Innovis and Equifax, who sell your data to the credit card companies.

4. Remain Anonymous – Sign up for grocery store loyalty cards and other membership-based discounts when you don’t need to actually receive anything in the mail from them by using a fake name with no address.

A solution to storage space might be to consider colocation services. You can find a site anywhere that meets your criteria and relay your company internet connection and data processing through an offsite center.

Fibernet is one of Utah’s oldest internet service providers and they offer utah colocation services. This might be a good resource for your company’s data processing needs.

This is true for Pragma Systems, too. This company was founded in 1990 to design, develop and port networking software for the big corporations, like Sony, Boeing, HP, Motorola and dozens more of the Fortune 500 companies that we all know and recognize.

A leader in SFTP, Pragma Systems is the place to go when you need secure connectivity.

I am not sure about how the system works, whether it be from satellites or UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles but it should be interesting to see just how well it works after a couple of years in service.

If your kids are smart enough to keep their profiles private then it may not as much of an issue, but read this blog post and the associated articles to consider some of the seriously dreadful things that can come from having so much personal information posted online, and consider that you could have another family member posting simple innocent info like the fact that you are going on vacation next week, and what kind of ramifications it could have such as having your home burglarized, all from some simple tidbits on a social network.

I sometimes think that a baby monitor styles device may be most practical, if only for the cost. It may be most practical to have a small security cam viewing device in every room in the house, so having just one expensive unit that can show the video may actually be outwieghed by the convenience (and subsequent more use) of a cheaper, more readily available device.

What do you think?

The electronics conglomerate recently showed a prototype of an RFID chip measuring a .05 millimeters square and 5 microns thick, about the size of a grain of sand. They expect to have ‘em on the market in two or three years.

The chips are packed with 128 bits of static memory, enough to hold a 38-digit ID number.

The size make the new chips ideal for embedding in paper, where they could verify the legitimacy of currency.. Read the entire story on Wireds Gadget Labs Blog one of my favorite blogs of the many they offer to read. My idea is they could be put on clothes and used to track your kids.

So I expected the article to talk only about some new computer cam surveilance software, which I am always interested in seeing who is developing for what reasons, and then consider the improper ways things like this could be used. Well the software they were talking about looks pretty cool, and it’s estimated date of arrival being 2012 makes me just put it on the backburner. I would expect this technology to be used in casinos before anywhere else. Most school systems do not have big security or technlogy budgets to even consuder rolling out a new technology like this for some time, even if it is readily available in 2012 I wouldn’t expect to see this in any school yards until my kids graduate and have kids in school one day.

In one part of the article, page two, they discussed what I find as a very interesting development in micro identifying dots that can be laser etched onto cars and car parts, helping to identify stolen cars. The most important part of this article to me is the ability to use this cool security technology to micro identify a laptop, notebook or ipod. There may need to be a more visible indicator with a reward if turned it kind of a thing to make this service as effective as I would like it to be.

The fact that this company has a home version that you can apply yourself makes this a very cool future secuity product that is available today, and I hope it will have a wider adaptaption and more awareness about finding original owners of laptops, ipods and the like. very cool.

Especially considering that so many business travelers rely on internet access and many companies assume that their workers are getting online to get more done, I am really suprised that more attention has not been given to the total lack of security.

If I had people traveling and accessing company data with the wireless access offered in many hotels and airports I would have to come up with some strong guidelines for what information they can or should not access. I am willing to bet that there have been a lot of passwords and other sensitive information leaked without businesses or their clients knowing that info is being broadcast in places that any 9th grade geek can get it and use it any way they want.

I think it would be wise for companies to consider what their employees are doing to unsecure important info. I also believe that there should be more access to secure, encrypted wifi.

Just a few thoughts on the brain right now, I hope to add more to this wifi area soon, and look forward to better security options in the future.