Network Security in a Nutshell

Networking Security

There are three main parts to keeping your information safe and private:

• Protecting your device.
• Protecting to communication
• Hiding who you are communicating with.

Protecting your Device. 

In order for your communications to be secure, you must secure the devices you are using to communicate. Keep your software patched and up to date, When it doubt, wipe and reinstall. Be aware of new programs, performance differences and signs of intrusion. Anti-virus/anti-spyware, AdBlockers and other programs can help with this.
Phones are more difficult to secure. Possibly even impossible to secure as they have a base band communication with the cellular carrier that can install and modify software at the root level and there is no way to secure it. However, attacks at that level have to be targeted, thus reducing their probability. If you are concerned your phone was targeted and compromised, you need a new phone. More details on this, and other phone security tips later.

Protecting your Communications

Network communications are often in plaintext by default. Even those that are encrypted often are stored on servers that you do not control and can be accessed without your knowledge. End-to-End encryption is the standard for peer to peer control. Even if stored by an intermediary server (like Gmail) all they have access to is the cyphertext.
Communications to servers can be protected with HTTPS. but who you are, who you are talking to, when you communicated and roughly the amount of communication will be visible to to intermediaries like your ISP or others with access to the routing. For example, an encrypted connection to Netflix is easy to separate from an encrypted connection to Gmail.

Hiding who you are communicating with

True anonymity is very difficult. but that are some tools that help. You can use a VPN to hide your traffic from your ISP, the coffeehouse WiFi or your employer/school. All of your traffic goes to the VPN, and then they relay it to the internet. Any VPN worth the name encrypts your connection, protecting the data in transit to the VPN. This is not enough to protect your from government surveillance. Governments can track your communications into and the communications out of your VPN and pull your traffic from the bundle. As well as tracking cookies or logins identifying you or if the VPN has been compromised by the government.
TOR on the other hand can be configured to constantly stream TOR traffic through your connecting, hiding your traffic within that constant stream. However, TOR is slow, difficult to use and heavily targeted by government actors. This also deserves it's own article and detailed information.

Recommendations:

• Use End-To-End encrypted chat and messaging protocols. These can be used with free services (like Google) because the server only gets cyphertext.
  
• Build a server for small groups to use for XMPP and other data transfers. Make sure to buy a SSL certificate so that all of your users can have secure access to the server. in order to secure this server against adversaries, it should be a physical box under someone's direct control.
  
• Build TOR relays and exit nodes in Amazon Web Services and other hosted solutions. This will make TOR easier to use and faster every day. These servers should not have any private data.
  
• Use TOR as much as possible. Use VPNs where applicable.