I really hate when an industry finds an opportunity to impose the “sky is falling” routine on the public. Fact is, every once in a while someone uses your credit card. Get over it–it’s the merchants who ultimately pay the bill anyway. The banks typically don’t even charge the $50 that they can legally charge you for stolen purchases. It’s really sad to see so many people investing tens of thousands of dollars into the industry. It’s especially daunting to see the average American shell out $30 a month on useless services that ultimately don’t work.

Just save your money and steer clear of Lifelock, Intelius, IdentityGuard, just all a waste. I’ve used at least 5 of the services on the market including the three mentioned and they have nice pretty interfaces, but you are paying for the glitter.

Here is a little secret: There at least 30 companies out in the marketplace that sell “credit protection” for as low as $19.95 a month, when in fact all they are doing is putting a “credit freeze” on your credit report. Fact is, all credit reporting agencies are required legally to provide that service free of charge, if you feel you have been victimized by identity theft, or if you feel you are at risk.

Want to save $250 a year? Here you go:

Equifax
Experian
TransUnion

In most states it’s free and worst case, its $10.00, a one-time fee.

For those who haven’t heard about it yet, you are entitled to a free credit report every 12 months from each of the three reporting agencies at Annual Credit Report.

Whatever you do, DO NOT sign up for credit reporting IF they ask for a credit card number. If they say it’s free and ask for a credit card number, it’s not free, even if they claim it’s just for “verification”. And IF you really want to protect yourself, don’t go to a middle man. Everyone gets the reporting from the same agencies anyway. Go with the Equifax Monitoring, it’s only $14.95 a month but most DO NOT need it. The only real value it provides is that you “know” what’s going on at least a few days later but not often. Additionally, if you are a homeowner, most policies already cover identity theft; make sure to ask your broker.

Use a network firewall. For commercial, go with a good Cisco firewall. The old Cisco 501’s are great for smaller networks and can be purchased on eBay pretty cheap.

If you don’t want to spend the cash, take an old Pentium box and go with IPCop. It’s a great solution if you have a technical person in house and even includes Snort IDS pre installed. Don’t skimp, spend the $29.99 (Not Monthly) on the Snort Subscription Service.

My advice would be to go with both, with Cisco on the front-end and IPCop behind it. With that, you have an incredible security solution.

If you have Windows, make sure you are running Windows Defender and have Automated Updates turned on. These two alone could be life savers, while Defender isn’t THAT great, it’s a good secondary solution.

Make sure you are running Anti Spyware - Spybot runs a great shop over there, they have one of the largest and strongest anti spyware tools available and best of all, it’s free. There are no ads or “upgraded” versions made available, it’s all good and free. Make sure you are running automated updates.

Use an Industry Strength Personal Firewall and Anti Virus Tool - Sorry Microsoft, I am probably one of the only bloggers who likes your products but on this one I have to give credit where credit is due. For a solid and stable solution, use Kaspersky. It’s a great tool and includes virtually everything you will need. It’s not free, but worth every penny.

For those network guys out there, nothing beats Ossec. It works with Linux and Windows and is virtually impossible to screw up. Spend the $75 bucks a month and get a remote box elsewhere for ossec and a syslog server. That investment will pay off when you can track results. For good support and low cost, high end servers, I suggest you go with ThePlanet. There are tons of other great solutions out there but these guys have their stuff together when it comes to stability and getting the job done.

I know it seems scary with everything going on but truth be told it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. Everything you should be doing now, you should have been doing 10 years ago, the only difference is now there is more help, more resources, and more free stuff.

Ultimately, you can never be 100% safe, things just happen in life no matter what you do but if you use common sense and add a few tools to protect yourself, you should be at least 99.9% safe which is really all you can ask for in the end.