Innovations like the Internet, mobile communications and computing, and smart appliances all have contributed to the rise of the smart home: a house with interconnected appliances and devices that aim to make life more convenient and comfortable for the homeowner.

However, some of us tend to forget one important aspect of homeownership: security. We’ve invested in a lot of entertainment and communications, but we forgot to keep our property safe and secure. But it’s not too late to act – there are a lot of home security technologies you can get nowadays, there’s basically no reason not to.

If you’re still not convinced, here are five reasons why you need home security technology now.

Deter crime and keep your home safe from burglary

The main reason why you should invest in a home security system? That is to keep your family and property safe all the time. With just a quick search online, you’ll see that burglaries happen all the time, regardless of whether you’re in the suburbs or in upscale neighborhoods. Walls won’t keep you safe. Security outposts won’t deter the most determined criminals.

But there’s one thing that could stop them in their tracks, and that’s a home security system in your property. Home security systems would guarantee that the would-be burglars’ faces and identities will be recorded. With high-quality surveillance cameras, it’s easy to catch them red-handed, even from a distance or under low lighting conditions.

They say prevention is better than cure, and that’s what these security systems do. Burglars would think twice robbing your homes, especially if they see that your perimeter is under 24/7 surveillance from your tech.

Round-the-clock protection from fire

Aside from protecting you from burglaries, home security systems also act as your last line of defense against fire. If there are long periods of time when there’s no one at your home, you should consider having a home security system installed, one that’s equipped with a camera sensitive enough to detect a fire.

There are many fire hazards at your home, like plugged appliances, power surges, or even just the weeds outside your home catching fire because of too much heat. With these in mind, it’s not hard to see why you really need a home security system in place. Cameras with heat or smoke detectors can then trigger the early warning system, send a message to your mobile phone when you’re away, or send a distress message to the fire department.

Advanced heat detectors can also determine if there’s a fire building in a specific part of your home, as they notice the smallest changes in temperature. It will give you an alert on your phone, allowing you to check video surveillance to verify if there is indeed an emergency.

Electricity management

Imagine this: you are about to have breakfast before going to work. You just popped bread on your toaster and turned on the coffee maker to brew a cup. Suddenly, your boss called, telling to hurry up. You dropped everything you are doing, grabbed your keys, and drove to work immediately. Only when you arrived at work did you realize all the appliances you’ve left running, and the catastrophe it could cause should something bad happen.

Fortunately, you can address this problem with the best home security solutions in place. A home security system can be used to monitor and manage electricity use in your home. If you have a smart home and your appliances are connected to an intelligent socket that you can control remotely, you can just turn everything off and be worry-free the whole day.

Aside from that, you can manage your energy use with your home security system. You can schedule the operating hours of appliances, like your air conditioning system, so that your home will have the perfect temperature when you get home. You can also set when your indoor and outdoor lights turn on or off if you’re away on vacation.

Which is the best smart home monitored security system? It depends on your preference — you check some better options here in vivint home security — but don’t ever skimp on getting insurance.

Aside from the actual protection that you get from a home insurance system, there are also other conveniences you can enjoy. One is having lower insurance premiums. Insurance, as we all know, is a necessity for all types of property. Car insurance is quite common and is a requirement before you can take one on the road.

The cost of homeowner’s insurance will vary based on what’s covered, payment methods, location, type and size of homes, and other considerable factors. Having a home security system in place, insurance companies ensure that you won’t incur substantial losses in the future.

This is a consideration you have to make when purchasing your own, and factor in the value of the security versus the savings you get on your insurance premium. Get more info here on how you can ensure that your home is built to last and avoid future costs and headaches.

Useful for medical emergencies

Lastly, home security systems can come in handy when there’s a medical emergency in your household. If, for example, an elderly who is left alone at home has a medical emergency, a home security system with Bluetooth technology can be triggered to alert emergency services and have the necessary help available within minutes. If you or a loved one already is of advanced age, your medical condition should be your main concern.

Home security systems can have emergency pulls or medical alert pendants included, and these could be used by those having problems like heart attacks or seizures.

Ultimately, having home security products in place is all about having peace of mind. It is about being prepared for future problems like burglaries, fire incidents, and accidents. By having a security system in your property, you can prevent, avoid, or act fast during emergencies.

You can be at home, at work, or even away on vacation and still be in control of things happening inside. With the availability of the internet almost anywhere in the world, you can easily check your surveillance systems on your mobile device anytime.

“I don’t care about online security because I have nothing to hide.”

This kind of thought is average for an Internet surfer. But thinking this way is all the same as don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.

Federal institutions have developed mechanisms that enable real-time invasion of privacy. Governments and corporations track all your online activities due to browsers and internet providers. Do you realize that right now all your communications are spied, files, passwords credit card can be used by third parties?

You are lucky! In this review, I share free and the most advanced software based on blockchain technology. It was developed to stop the surveillance and guarantee secure data transfer online!

What global problems does society suffer online?

Surveillance — Worldwide surveillance is getting more power due to social media, messengers, browsers, and other online services. All the information you mentioned once is stored on a server to be extracted as needed.

Espionage — Corporations like Google and providers track websites you visit, connection times, passwords, and metadata. Governments make such espionage legitimate and even required (UK, US, and many others). A VPN service can guarantee a certain level of web privacy.

Censorship — Firstly, freedom of speech and expression was a vital point of the whole concept of the Internet. Now institutions in many European countries restrict the content published online. Do you think you read actual world news?

Ads — All the private data serves not only for faster identification of the user. Corporations use it as a source of influence through ads. They know all about your behavior, preferences, and history of search to implement their marketing goals. So, don’t be surprised with exact targeting.

Best privacy tool: does it exist?

Yes! The solution has been developed for five years by the team of tech-experts.

Utopia is a secure and all-in-one ecosystem that is based on the most advanced existing technology. Enhanced encryption is built on elliptic curves and p2p network architecture. What are the features making Utopia one of the best privacy tool?

• Self-enclosed ecosystem — Using Utopia, you are ensured that third-party companies have no access to your data. Freedom of expression and confidentiality are fundamental principles within Utopia.

• Decentralization — Data warehouses, companies are never used as a server for data storage. You are the only person who is in control of texts, pictures, card details, and e-mails.

• Anonymity — Utopia never asks users for personal data such as telephone number, address, and even name. You receive a life-long Private Key as registered; it works a lot like a QR-code generated for you. Key opens the door to safe communication online.

• Multifunctionality — Utopia provides us with security for all possible activities online. It includes uMessenger, uMail, uWallet, mining bot, and many more tools users can enjoy for free.

• Rewards — The only thing you need to do to get paid is being online. Utopia pays out in native currency, which is stable, secure, and easy to transfer.

Utopia – what are the main features?

As soon as you downloaded Utopia and got a Secret Key generated by uNS all the ecosystem’s tools are at your disposal. Instant text and voice messages, e-mail, financial transfers, and even website creation are empowered by security. To top it all, you get rewarded with Crypton, which is not affected by other cryptocurrencies.

For example, in the Utopia network, you can anonymously: register an account, communicate, send uMails, share files, and perform financial transactions. Crypton is the native cryptocurrency of Utopia. The ecosystem, with the help of advanced crypto and distributed technologies, automatically maintains its value. It is not affected by the world’s currencies, raw materials, metals, or other cryptocurrencies. You can keep your money in Crypton, with no fear of market volatility.

uMessenger

It works like existing messengers you got used to. With the only difference – messages and files are encoded by default using elliptic curves. Only the recipient can decode it and see the content.

A public key is your nickname and the key to decrypt the data. What is essential about the messenger is that, unlike analogs, group chats and channels are encrypted by default too.

Creating a channel is a sufficient option for those who have a blog or business. Newsfeed and work conversations are provided with privacy and many functions. Users can identify languages and geoTags in the channel settings. Location tags and uTags are essential tools to find the audience of the same interests.

It’s comfortable to look for private discussions using Channel ID, uCode, or Public Key of the owner.

uMail

E-mails are encoded end-to-end and integrated with the other services. Choose Hybrid Mode to see the mailbox, chat rooms, and contacts on one screen.

There is one difference between uMail and the other e-mail services. To enhance privacy level, users can send uMails only within the Utopia environment, to authorized members.

You can generate a template for uMails, which is particularly convenient for business correspondence. The similar layout enables effortless message creation for each type of letters.

Idyll browser

Idyll is an in-built browser which is based on advanced encryption mechanisms. Due to its anonymity and decentralization, it can’t serve governmental surveillance goals.

Idyll has no central server which saves browsing history and metadata. The safe and anonymous Internet is open for every Utopia user. Using Idyll browser protects you from being a tool for corporations’ marketing goals and annoying ads.

Idyll provides users with a high speed of page loads, which participants contribute themselves.

uWallet

Safe transactions between your accounts or with merchants have never been that easy. uWallet is designed to issue Crypto cards and Crypton transfers.

Credit card with customized design and digits can be issued in a matter of seconds. There is no necessity to reveal your Private key to commit transfers, which leads security to a higher level.

Your balance, interest rates, and transaction data are always on the dashboard.

Mining bot

Users earn CRPs when they assist Utopia Ecosystem by boosting the network paths. You have a chance to get paid every 15 minutes for doing nothing.

You can use several Bot simultaneously to get more bonuses. But the only limitation is that they should work on separate devices.

That is how the number of routing connections is growing inside the ecosystem.

Crypto file manager

Crypto container allows you to store, edit, and transfer files securely. Nevertheless, you can’t work on the same file from different devices simultaneously. All the history data is saved locally.

To sum up

In 2019 the Internet is no longer a place for free expression and privacy. Corporations and governments legalized online espionage to gain money and power. Browsers, messengers, social media track your online activities, steal the content, and use it for their purposes. Utopia is a decentralized solution for online security based on the most advanced blockchain technology. Built-in encryption mechanisms work by default so that third-parties have no access to your activities and data.

Download and use Utopia to enjoy its multiple tools!

In today’s world, cybersecurity is a real issue. You can search the web and almost immediately find instances of recent web attacks. Despite occurring in 2016, the “Dyn attack” is still fresh on the tech community’s mind and shows how powerful these cyberattacks can be and how much real loss of revenue they can incur, not to mention the degradation of reputation and trust.

Over one weekend, history’s worst distributed denial-of-service attack happened. The New York Times, Twitter, Paypal, and Reddit were some of the major sites that fell victim to this attack. The attack caused Dyn (the company that manages most of the internet’s DNS infrastructure) an 8% loss of business. Unfortunately, these attacks are here to stay and are constantly evolving to beat our current security measures. Over 3,700 DDoS attacks happen every day on the Web. Therefore, it’s critical to stay up-to-date with today’s cybersecurity tactics to prevent your site from a cyber attack.

What is a DDoS attack?

A DDoS attack is an acronym for a distributed denial-of-service attack. It is when an attacker attempts to overload a server, rendering it unable to function normally. This can be applied to anything connected to the internet, such as networks, servers, devices, and applications. These are typically coordinated attacks from multiple systems to one location. A secondary kind of attack, called a DoS attack, is an attack from one source. The previously mentioned DDoS attacks are much more common because attacks from a singular source are significantly easier to identify and thwart.

These assaults happen by flooding a system with fraudulent requests for data. It could take the form of sending such a massive volume of requests that a server crashes under pressure, or it could just be sending enough requests to a database that it is unable to function. By doing this, an attacker can render all of the available bandwidth, RAM or CPU fully spent and unable to process authentic requests by users.

Types of DDoS attacks

Volumetric Attacks

A volumetric attack is designed to overwhelm a network’s capacity by sending large amounts of fraudulent data requests to every available port. Because of all the fraudulent requests, the network spends all of its CPU continually reviewing the fraudulent requests rendering it unable to process authentic traffic.

Application-Layer Attacks

Application layer DDoS attack targets the application itself, concentrating on specific vulnerabilities or points. The result is the application not being able to serve up content to the user. An application-layer attack targets specifically on direct Web traffic such as HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, or SMPT.

Protocol Attacks

Protocol attacks focus on destroying areas in the network that work specifically on verifying connections. By sending continuous requests, the attacker can cause memory buffers in the target server and overload (even potentially crash) the system. These attacks can also target firewalls, which is why a firewall alone is not enough to stop a DoS attack.

5 Tips for preventing DDoS attacks

Create a Response Plan

The first course of action in preventing a DDoS attack is doing a security assessment on your network and making planning accordingly. Depending on how large your network is, you might have multiple teams dedicated to preventing an attack. These plans can get quite extensive, and deciding your first course of action will influence the outcome and end of the attack. It’s vital to make sure your team is informed, prepared, and aware of all their responsibilities should an attack occur. Though plans vary depending on the size of the company, these four key elements remain the same:

• Create A Systems Checklist
• Form a Response Team
• Develop a notification and escalation policy
• Formulate a list of internal and external contacts

Secure Your Network

To reduce risks, a multi-layer plan must be put in place. This must include firewalls, anti-spam, load balancing, VPN, and other layers of DDoS prevention techniques. While most standard network equipment comes with some limited DDoS prevention options, it’s also wise to outsource additional help. Several cloud-based solutions are pay-per-use. These options are especially beneficial for small to medium-sized businesses. Finally, make sure your network and systems are up to date. As DDoS attacks continuously evolve to beat current security measures, outdated systems are always the first to show weakness. Stay on the lookout for software updates and ways you can close gaps in your system.

Use the Cloud

There are several advantages when it comes to external, cloud-based DDoS prevention services. First, private networks usually do not have near the number of resources and bandwidth than the cloud does. Secondly, the cloud is specifically designed to diffuse attacks and absorb fraudulent requests and traffic before it reaches the desired target. Third, these external cloud services are constantly monitored by software engineers scouring the internet for DDoS attacks.

Practice Securing Your Network

To best secure yourself from a DDoS attack, there is no room for user error. Therefore it’s important to engage and interact with your team using strong security practices. Some practical examples include: using complex passwords that regularly change, using secure firewalls that do not allow outside traffic, and implementing anti-phishing practices. Unfortunately, these won’t be enough to stop an attack. However, they serve as a solid foundation for security.

Use DDoS-as-a-Service

To improve flexibility for a business that utilizes in-house and third-party resources, (even cloud or dedicated hosting) consider using DDoS-as-a-Service. The main benefit of DDoS-as-a-service is the customization of security architecture for the specific needs of a company. It also ensures that your current security infrastructure meets every standard and compliance requirement. This then enables companies of any size to have the highest level of DDoS protection.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, DDoS attacks are no longer a news headline or just a fear for large companies. As DDoS attacks happen more and more, medium and smaller companies are in the crosshairs. The question is no longer if you will get attacked, it’s when you do get attacked, are you prepared. Therefore, it’s time to start analyzing now and work to develop a course of action should an attack occur.

For additional information on DDoS attacks, check out this article.