Unfortunately, no matter how often they’re told, most people still don’t take regular backup seriously until they learn the hard way when they experience a hard drive failure — alas, all too late.

However, the more precious data you amass —  digital music, movies and photos and more — the harder it is to store your backups on your PC’s hard drive or copy them to CDs or DVDs without using half a spindle to do the job.

That’s the position I found myself in recently — loads to back up, but not enough spare space on my hard drive, and the daunting prospect of using up all my DVD blanks. That is, until I came across the Clickfree Wireless Backup — the answer to a big backup victim’s prayer.

The Clickfree Wireless Backup comes in two storage sizes: 500G for $199 and 1TB for $299 — that’s enough to back up most people’s entire hard drive, allowing you to restore all your files (but not programs) in the event of a total hard drive collapse. It will restore all your files to their original locations, too.

This wireless backup device couldn’t be easier to set up and its storage capacity will handle the backup needs of most people — you just plug it into a USB port on your PC or Mac and you don’t need to install any software.

The Clickfree Wireless Backup device automatically detects your wireless network and connects to it, allowing you to back up any nominated files (even those in use) from any or all of the computers on your network (up to 20), wherever they are located in your home.

Oh, and even if you do have space on your hard drive for backing up those important files, you should always have your data backed up on a range of media external to your computer, such as CD/DVD and/or an external hard drive — if your hard drive tanks it, having your backups on the same drive is a folly, because you’ve lost the lot. Also make a backup to store offsite — in the event of theft, fire or some other disaster, your data will remain safe.

The Clickfree Wireless Backup is compatible with Windows XP, Vista or 7, Mac OSX 10.5 systems or later with Intel processor and comes with a three-year warranty.

Fortunately, help is at hand via the Norton Online Family service  — and it doesn’t cost a cent!

Using Online Family, parents can monitor what content their child is accessing online and block specific sites or types of sites.

They can also site time limits, so children don’t spend too much time on the computer, and even limit use to specific times of the day.

Parents can monitor their children’s search terms, and their activities on social networking sites and in chat sessions.

And you don’t even need to be in the house to keep track of what the kids are doing online. Online Family will send you email alerts when children attempt to visit a blocked site or ignore a warning.

Parents can also access helpful advice regarding Internet security and how to deal with the issue with their kids.

Norton Online Family

The How Secure Is My Password? site, is a password strength tester like yesterday’s Password Meter site, but with a twist: it calculates how long it would take an average PC to crack your password. It doesn’t come with Password Meter’s handy checklist, but it is a very novel approach for testing your password’s strength.

To create a strong password, you need to avoid any reference to any word or phrase that people can easily uncover — a pet’s name, nickname, maiden name, offspring’s name and so on. And don’t use any word that may appear in a dictionary, as many password decrypting programs use dictionaries as part of their password-cracking arsenal.

Similarly, you should avoid number combinations such as birth dates, phone numbers, postcodes, ages and the like. You may think that these details about your life are not readily accessible, but you only need to have made mention of any of these details on a site such as Facebook, and even if your Facebook page is locked down tight, those of your friends may not, inadvertently giving your information to their friends — people you don’t know from a bar of soap — or even people they don’t know who have just been trawling the site for likely victims.

If you have created a password using the above advice, but you’re still not sure of how strong it is, you can head to the Password Strength Checker. Just enter your proposed password, and it will tell you its strength.

Of course, if the letters and numbers mean nothing to you, you run into the problem of how you’re going to remember them. This can be overcome in a number of ways, including substituting any letters in a word you will remember with numbers that vaguely resemble that letter  — say, a zero for an ‘o’, a 3 for an ‘e’, a 5 for an ‘s’.

For example, if your dog’s name is  Rover, you could create a password such as R0^3r — you’ve used mixed case with the ‘r’s, substituted the ‘v’ with a punctuation mark (the caret mark is an inverted ‘v’), and the 3 looks like a back-to-front ‘E’.

You can also use the beginning initials of each word in a phrase or a line from a favourite song, using the same substitution method above.

If you have created a password using any of the above methods, but you’re still not sure of how strong it is, you can head to the Password Meter site. Just enter your proposed password, and it will tell you its strength, giving you a strength percentage score and a checklist of strength elements.

Password Meter

To

Lately, there’s been a string of changes to the Facebook site, many of which have sailed under the radar of the average Facebook user.

One that is particularly disturbing is the Instant Personalization feature which, by default, is turned on, allowing Facebook’s partners (initially Pandora, Yelp and Docs.com) to access information from your Facebook account including information on your friends.

You can find out more on these changes and how to opt out of them here.

If you’re cool with these sites having access to your Facebook information, that’s fine, but just remember that your friends might not feel the same way and consider safeguarding their information by blocking the new Instant Personalization feature.

Thanks for the heads-up, Rose!

To get an overview of Norton AntiVirus 2011 and download it, click here, and for details of what you’ll find in Norton Internet Security 2011 and a download link, click here.

Because the programs are betas, they are only available for use during the testing period before the final release. However, while the downloads are not a long-term security solution, they give you the opportunity to try the products out before committing to purchase.

Norton has also announced three new security tools that will remain free to consumers permanentlyN to help fight cybercrime:

* Norton SafeWeb for Facebook — Safeguard against malicious URLs by scanning your feed using Norton Safe Web. Protect your friends by advising them of malicious URLs you might have in your feed.

* Norton Power Eraser — Eliminates deeply embedded and difficult to remove crimeware that traditional virus scanning doesn’t always detect.

* Norton Bootable Recovery Tool (only available to Norton subscribers) — Gets you back up and running if your PC becomes so infected that it won’t work properly or even boot up.

Parents should also check out OnlineFamily.Norton. It lets them manage where their children go online, how long they spend there, who they talk to, and what information they’re sharing with others. It also helps parents open up a positive dialogue with their children about good online habits.

Previously included with AVG’s business products, AVG Rescue CD has now been released for use by consumers including AVG Free users. Not only will the software automatically mount all hard drives of the computer and scan them for viruses and malware, it will automatically restore a safe network connection to the computer.

The AVG Rescue CD also includes a Windows Registry editor, a TestDisk utility for recovering deleted files and lost partitions, a file browser for navigating folders, and a Ping tool for basic network diagnostics

Just download the program from here and burn it to a CD or DVD, or extract it directly to a USB flash drive. Insert the disc or USB drive into the unresponsive computer and let it work its magic. On the download page, you’ll also find links to a video tutorial on how to use the disc if you’re unsure what to do.

Download your copy now and keep it on hand in case disaster strikes.

AVG Rescue CD

The password-stealing virus is delivered as an attachment via an email purporting to be from Facebook. Ironically, like many of these  attemots, the email plays on the security fears of many Facebook users to actually breach that security. And it’s not just your Facebook password that it can steal once it installs on your PC.

Here is an image of the email (courtesy of McAfee), so if one lands in your Inbox, don’t open it and delete it immediately (and don’t forget to empty the trash folder).

Paul is the Asia-Pacific Head of Technology for enterprise security solutions company Sophos.

If you’re expecting the blog to be full of geek-speak and a bit dry, forget it. Paul covers the latest security issues and threats — without the hype and hystrionics — in an entertaining, plain-English style that makes the information easily accessible to the average consumer.

I was lucky enough to share a coffee with Paul on Friday. However, what started out as a quick catchup on security issues morphed into over two hours of fascinating conversation around Paul’s insights into past, present and future trends in cyber-crime.

If you’re expecting the blog to be full of geek-speak and a bit dry, forget it. Paul shares his insights into the latest security issues and threats in a ‘chatty’ writing style that makes the information easily accessible to the average consumer.

Do yourself a favour and add Paul’s blog to your RSS feeds as I have. You won;t be sorry and you’ll get some insights into how cyber-criminal operate and be better prepared to keep security threats at bay.

Paul Ducklin’s Blog

When the W32/DatCrypt Trojan infects a computer, it makes it seem as if some files, such as Microsoft Office documents, video, music and image files have been ‘corrupted’, when the files have actually been encrypted by DatCrypt.

The Trojan then creates what appears to be an authentic message from Windows, advising the user to download and execute the ‘recommended file repair software’ called Data Doctor 2010.

Only after purchasing the ransomware for $89.95 is the user granted access to their own files.

You can read more about this Trojan and view screenshots of its manifestation here.