Revelations about the PRISM project involve US tech companies that have been compelled to provide special assistance to US intelligence agencies. Will secret arrangements between tech companies and US intelligence affect how independent security researchers disclose vulnerabilities?

It's time all of us made a commitment to this basic data security. With full disk encryption all data is protected by default and prying officials at least have to jump through legal hoops before they can start casually thumbing through all your private data.

As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs.

Penetration testing involves deliberately attacking your system to determine vulnerabilities. Using a variety of tools designed for specific tasks, you attempt to break into your own system. Exhaustive pen testing helps you assess potential breach points, which you should then plug before anyone attempts to exploit them.

Before casually clicking on that "Install Adobe Flash Player/Reader" button, think twice. Then don't do it! You'll be inviting every cracker and his dog to invade your network.

More solid reasons for leaving the cloud to the birds. With varying international laws, almost anyone can end up examining your private data. Security and privacy are never guaranteed.

Lightweight Portable Security (LPS), created by USA's Department of Defence, is a small Linux live CD focusing on privacy and security, for this reason, it boots from a CD and executes from RAM, providing a web browser, a file manager and some interesing tools. LPS-Public turns an untrusted system into a trusted network client.

The smart mobile user shouldn’t overlook Linux. The question is, which distro should you pick? You’ll get a different answer depending who you ask.