EH-Net

Hi all. My name is Rob and I'm a network security student at Sunderland university in the UK. I've spent quite a lot of time lurking around the fringes of the online security community, and I feel that I have reached a point with my education recently where I can make a decent contribution to that community.
I've spent a lot of my time reading various articles and tutorials, and this has helped me massively in developing my own skills, for which I am very grateful. I've started feeling recently that the time has come to give something back. With this in mind I have written an article on data security for home users. I realise that the topic is not strictly within the remit of this site, but I was really hoping that someone would be able to point me in the right direction to have this read by its intended audience. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Anyone who'd like to look this article over can find it here. http://robmongoose.blogspot.com/2008/05/data-security-for-home-users.html (http://robmongoose.blogspot.com/2008/05/data-security-for-home-users.html)

Any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Rob

Rob,

good work on getting your thoughts and opinions documented online, its certainly a good start to spreading the positive message of security.

I think you article reads reasonably well, however some areas seem sometimes over techy for possibly your intended audience. I dont mean this in a bad way as it is very difficult, but I think you need to define your targeted audience. This might be the computer savvy, who already know (or believe they do) everything about computing, viruses etc, or are you trying to help average Joe, who has a computer at home, and dabbles with the Internet, but doesnt really understand the implications of his actions.

As for getting your message out, well you have made a great start with the blog. If you want to reach more people in perhaps a more physical manner I would suggest speaking to your local library, or maybe if you have a LearnDirect center where you live speak to them. People often go to these places to learn about computers, the Internet and such like.

Hope this helps a little, I am also in the UK, so if you know who your specific audience is let me know and perhaps I can come up with some ways to help you? All the best on your course btw.

Hi,

Thanks very much for your comments. I do see what you mean about the mixed levels of information I've put in there, it was something that occured to me when I read through it again later and I guess that's the sort of thing you learn to deal with through practice.

As for defining a specific audience, to be honest at the moment I'm not sure. I don't think I'd be being big headed in saying that I definately know more than average Joe and that confining myself to writing for a none techy ordiance wouldn't be all that interesting in the long run. At the same time I'm a little nervous about writing something directed at the infosec community because I'd be worried about putting something in that's not strictly accurate which wouldn't really aid my future credibility... Thank you for your offer - If and when I suss things out audience-wise I may well take you up on it.

On the subject of my uni course, I've now completed the foundation degree and got a commendation for it from the uni, So I'm pretty happy on that front at the moment  ;D