How do you protect your offline/online activity and data?

    Is this necessary? Absolutely! I will share here a few methods for protection, when you work offline or online or when you just surf the Internet, reading stuff or working on your topics.

    It was a rainy summer evening in 1991, when I got a message from the 286 I was using at that point in time; "Your PC is now stoned!". Of course I did not get the message, but after this I started and finalized a research campaign on this. I need to remind you that the www started to be shaped/used later, so my research was not too simple on this topic.
    Anyway, later I found that this message is given by a computer virus, called Stoned virus. I got infected with this virus when running a proprietary software, found on a genuine floppy-disk of a display. That's when I got the picture that people in this world consume their resources (time, energy, knowledge) just to do something harmful for others.
    Later, in the 1992-1993s, during the college, I've started to build my own virus, just for fun. I never finished it, due to the simplicity I found in it and the lack of motivation. At the beginning I thought it is more complicated. Well, it is not at all. You just need the proper motivation for you. I never found it!
    After this incident, I decided to use with no interruption at least one antivirus. This one was/is Norton Security, on all my devices, laptops and mobiles.

First level of protection
    Of course that now I use more than one, concurrent, so my complete solution is:

• Norton Security - on laptops and mobiles;
• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware - on laptops and mobiles;
• HitmanPro - only on laptops;
• Lookout - only on mobiles.

    I think this seems to be a completed solution for protecting against online threats. The total average bill for all of these: $19.83. Is this bill big enough for a near perfect protection, on ALL (5, in my case)  online devices? I think NO!

B. Second level
    This second layer is about Internet privacy. You probably know that when you work/surf on the Internet, there are packets of data sent/received by your machine(s). These packets could arrive on somebody's eye, an unwanted person, no matter that it is your ISP, the hacker near you, when waiting for your plane, on an open WI-FI connection, or the hacker at miles from you, who just intercepted your communication.
    This communication between your machine(s) and the Internet can be encrypted, with no pitfalls for you. There are many commercial solutions for this, but I will recommend to you the one I am successfully using. It is called IPVanish and I've chosen it because:

• you can make any internet connection secure, by providing 256-bit AES encryption of your traffic;
• you can surf the web without a trace, by automatically changing IP and logging nothing;
• you can have access to the world's fastest VPN servers.

This will cost you $4.58 per month, in average. Do all of these worth this amount of money?

C. Third level
    This third (and last) level of protection I want to present to you is about encrypting your personal/work files, stored on local/mobile devices or/and cloud.
​    First need is to have the files encrypted only when working offline. I consider this is trivial for professionals, so I will not take any effort on presenting it (see the popular encrypted zip archive, using your own password, or even Kruptos2.com etc).
    The second need is to have the files/folders protected in the could. We've all heard about the scandals with the data leaked from corporations. We can protect against these types of online threats, as well.
    When storing online data, we have 3 points for encryption:

• while data is at rest, on the service's servers;
• while data is in transit, from your machine(s) to the servers (on the Internet);
• while data is in your machine, before leaving it.

    The first one is the online storage company responsibility, but it's your damage if it's not secure enough.
     The second one can be easily solved by the second layer of encrypting the transmission, but it is not enough, since it is temporarily solution (only while on the communication channel).
    The third one (end-to-end encryption) is the most secure one and this can be solved in two ways:

• by choosing an online storage provider which offers end-to-end encryption (Spider Oak, Tresorit, Sync.com, TeamDrive, Mega.nz, pCloud, E-Box.net etc);
• by choosing a regular (and popular?) online storage provider (DropBox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive etc) and adding a layer of encryption over it;

    I will focus on the third choice, since it is mine and I consider it the best. Why this? Because I think we all will have more benefits when some companies will be focused on storage and other companies on security.
    I will mention from this last category just the best ones: Viivo, Boxcryptor, Sookasa, enCryptedCloud.
    My choices for this level are Google Drive with Viivo. Yours?

    I mention that there are not any commercial relationships between me and any of the companies mentioned above, so there is no interest except our own protection. I am just one of their regular customers.
    Here are a few useful links:

• The best apps to encrypt your files before uploading to the cloud
• Top 5 Free Encryption Tools To Protect Your Data Stored in the Cloud
• Kruptos 2
• Townsend Security
• CipherPoint
• enCrypted Cloud
• Viivo
• Boxcryptor
• Sookasa

 I am eager to hear your choices and thoughts on all of these, no matter the communication channel you will choose.