Technology makes our lives easier, creating the opportunity to complete tasks quicker and access information that previous generations didn’t even know was available. But it also opens the door to an unimaginable number of threats to our lives and businesses.
More than 16 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2012, according to federal statistics. In 2014, the Internet Crime Complaint Center of the U.S. Department of Justice received its 3 millionth complaint of online wrongdoings.
Scary for you and me, but corporations both big and small deal with cybersecurity as well – although not all companies recognize the danger. The most recent alarm sounded after the headline hack of Sony late last year, which sparked nothing short of talk of war with North Korea.
Yet according to a Deloitte report last January, most companies do not see themselves as vulnerable to online attack, even though half those surveyed suffered a security incident within the previous 12 months. High-profile assaults on big targets, like the Sony attack, may skew reports on the prevalence and depth of cybercrime. Still, a Hewlett Packard and the Ponemon Institute study claims the average cost of cybercrime hit $12.7 million per company last year, nearly double the cost of just five years ago.
Added a similar recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey, “The cybersecurity programs of U.S. organizations do not rival the persistence, tactical skills and technological prowess of [hackers].”
So what can you do to safeguard identity, credit card numbers and account information online? For starters, common sense goes a long way and better you start out more suspicious than trusting when it comes to Internet safety.
When shopping online, for instance, it’s often safer to stick to the well-known retailers such as Amazon and Walmart or websites that use established third-party verification services such as VeriSign and TRUSTe. Remember that in recent months even the biggest, presumably most secure names in consumer services and retail suffered hacks: Target, JP Morgan, United Parcel Service, Dairy Queen, Staples and so on.
You and I can’t protect multinational corporations, but we can do more to protect ourselves:
Don’t use the same password for multiple websites.
When accessing Wi-Fi in public places, realize that scammers can monitor what you access online. Use a reliable antivirus and, if possible, firewall software to thwart hackers.
Investigate storage security. The cutting-edge protection is the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) symmetric block cipher; many online systems still rely on the 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption.
Check your credit report for suspicious activity. The Fair Credit Reporting Act guarantees you access to your credit report every 12 months via a website called AnnualCreditReport.com.
Regularly review your bank and credit card statements. People often discover identity theft long after the crime took place. The quicker the investigation starts, the likelier you are to minimize your losses. If you become a victim of identity theft, call your bank and credit card companies immediately.
©2015 AdviceIQ
