"Ninety-percent of all data in the world has been created in the past two years." With the growth rate of data exponentially rising in the current era, many crimes have accelerated into cyberspace. Events like the security breach at consumer outlets like Target, or cyber space like Microsoft Outlook shows that in it's current situation, the world is not ready for cyber crimes. The everyday consumer is connected to the cyberworld at every transaction yet the correct securities have not been put into place to defend their privacy.
IBM has recorded for its clients, over 81 billion attempts at attacking the firewall and annually over 90 mid to large sized incidents occur. What does this mean to us at a consumer level? Of over 90 incidents that occurred, about 6.6% or 6 incidents existed in the retail and wholesale industry and 7.3% or approximately 7 incidents occurred in the health and social services. In 2011, cyber crime increased by 2500 percent costing us Americans over $140 billion in transactions. In reference to the welfare blog post from last week, data stored in the welfare programs were leaked at least seven times in the past year.
It may seem like a lot of the problems can be fixed by the larger companies, but we are also at fault. Over 73% of the security breaches can be accounted for by end-users and misconfigured systems. This points to things like phishing scams (fake emails asking for information), fake phone calls, and viruses on computers.
The solutions proposed by IBM are meant for businesses, but many of them can be applied to our lives as well, because we as consumers should also make ourselves more aware of cyber attacks and be our own police. First, we must educate ourselves on cyber attacks and suspicious content while surfing the internet and checking our emails. There are many phishing scams daily that one can fall into. When an email asks for personal information be sure to check the sender's email to make sure that it's not a fake email that's getting your information. A simple solution, yet many people haven't done is to put a password on all your networks. Despite being a simple solution, I can already see five networks that are unprotected that I can easily go into and cause havoc to it's users. Another quick tip is to keep your computer clean, do routine scans in order to ensure that there aren't malicious programs on your computer.
Source:
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03518usen/GBE03518USEN.PDF
"I can already see five networks that are unprotected that I can easily go into and cause havoc to it's users" reminds me of how lax a lot of people are about security. Many websites will ask for passwords with as little as 5 characters or 8 or more with multiple letters, numbers, and signs, yet a majority of people want to keep their passwords as simple as possible in order to make their lives easier. However, this only makes them more vulnerable to hackers and increases the chance that their personal information is stolen. Furthermore, a lot of security breaches can be attributed to browsing websites that have malware or some other virus linked to them. People can simply download virus protection software or browser add-ons (my favorite being Chrome's Adblock plus) in order decrease the likelihood of being hacked. We should all be more aware of the threat of cyber attacks and take as many steps as possible to minimize the threat.
ReplyDelete-Dylan Tong
Your article reminds me of the alert-email my home university, Sciences Po Paris, sent us a couple months ago, to warn us that, from now, we would be required to change our passwords every 6 months.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I thought this measure was excessive and useless. After all, how to create and to remember so many different new 8-character-with-at-least-one-number passwords ? We have passwords for everything : banking, housing accout, Facebook, gmail... They must be longer and longer (the minimum number of signs required increased from 6 to 8) it cannot be easy to find (our name or our mother's name...), they must be changed often and have to be different from each other.
Yet, the more I read the articles of the blog especially about cyber crime, the more I am convinced that this kind of routinely and individual prudence is necessary to put basic protections.
I wonder until what amount of individual security duties this trend will lead us over the next years. What will our children be required to do ? To write a whole page of codes before getting access to their mail box ?
Romain MILLARD
"Ninety-percent of all data in the world has been created in the past two years", if true this is incredible.
ReplyDeleteIt appears that the world has yet to be educated on computer/ cyber safety. It is the 21st century and it should be required that all high school students take a brief crash course on this topic. Securing online safety is fairly simple and once learned lasts a lifetime. On the topic of enlightening citizens on modern internet safety and protocol, it should be clearly conveyed to people that once one puts something on the internet it will never go away. If people were more aware of this form of self-policing what is posted and how much is posted would radically change.
The youngest generation on the internet is going to run into an interesting dilemma when the future president's life is entirely documented online. Life is long and we as young adults have yet to see the true consequences of over posting.
-Alex Rose
I agree with you that many times it is on the end user's fault for these cyber crimes and it is important that we become aware of how much personal data we release when we agree to a set of terms or send personal information via email. But with so many things going online, from online bank statements, paying electricity and internet bills online, etc I believe it is important that companies who use online system with their customers to take additional measures to protect the identity of the users. Since we are continuing to turn toward technology and the internet for our services, I agree that it is important to take additional measures to prevent scams and identity theft .
ReplyDelete-Brenda Lee
Thomas Smith
ReplyDeleteThese statistics are worrisome, but I'm honestly not all that surprised by them. Technology and cyberspace and constantly evolving while the knowledge most people have about the technology they use everyday seems to be somewhat stagnant. People aren't nearly cautious enough about hackers, malicious software, etc., even though mostly everyone uses cyberspace to transmit extremely valuable information. Unless people take the time to educate themselves about how to protect their networks/information and identify phishing attempts, cyber crime is only going expand and become more and more effective as advancing technology enables people to accomplish more over cyberspace.
If there is a problem on both ends of transaction, the business and the customer, then there is a problem with the system as a whole. I think that it's the businesses responsibility to overhaul the system. In the meanwhile, it is important for people to be educated in ways of protecting our online personas and information.
ReplyDeleteHowever, i think that as humans, we will forget our password. It's silly to say "Hey, don't fall for this scam" when the scams are purposely there to trick you. You always have to be on guard with your information. A better solution would be a system would put your password plus your fingerprint. Or your password plus an everchanging code that travels with you on a keychain. Tech companies already employ these security measures for their companies. Why can't we add these to all personal computer by mandating them in every log on?
Tina Truong
Only after falling victim to a scam myself have I realized the dire consequences of generous and thoughtless sharing of personal information. Personally, I was so uncomfortable with the idea that people can use my personal information to scam not only myself but use my personal information to possibly scam people associated with me, and vice versa. It seems that corporate businesses should take care of consumers' information because, as we can see with the drop of Target's profits post the security breach incident, they would lose valuable consumers. However, it seems like the cyber world is truly inefficient and lacking security when it comes to personal information.
ReplyDeleteTechnology has been growing exponentially along with the cyber world and it only seems appropriate to seriously address the issue of security and form a professional policing within the cyber world.
June Shin
It’s interesting to see the dilemma in this situation. Most websites require a password with both letters and numbers. You either keep all passwords on paper or you create the same password for every website, or maybe you record your passwords on other websites which help you keep records. After all, you have to keep them somewhere visible rather than in your brain. If they’re visible anyways, they’d probably detected by someone else. Then, how do you prevent yourself from losing these confidential information?
ReplyDeleteYu Fu
I was very impressed by all the numbers and statistics data you have in this posting! I didn't have a clear idea of how much data is out there and how much of those scams are threatening us. In addition to your data here, I have also looked up some other articles and I was informed that: "The number of phishing attacks soared by more than 20 percent in the third quarter of 2013, says a just-issued report from the APWG (Anti-Phishing Working Group), noting that the bulk of the increase is due to a surge of attacks against money-transfer, retail and e-commerce websites" (Feb 12, 2014, SC Magazine UK). I was pretty shocked that there was 20 percent increase in phishing attacks within one quarter of last year. As we don't really know how to protect us from phishing fraud yet, it just scares me in doing anything online. Those phishing groups have been using countless ways to access to people's information. For example, in South Korea, the "voice phishing" has been generating enormous frauds and almost one out of two has been the victim of it. One of the common way is, once they collect your very basic information such as your phone number or your name and your primary bank from somewhere, most likely from online where you make transactions, they'll trick you with those manipulating questions asking you for your information by telling you that your account was hacked so they need your information to protect your account. This has resulted in a number of financial breach issues in Korea both in those private companies and the public sector by stealing your information with all kinds of creative scams and phishing. The best way we can do is to be aware of those incidents and the ways they use like you suggest in this posting; yet, I do think that we must discuss about this new generation of frauds that a new market for anti-phishing can be established.
ReplyDeleteSophie Park
Chey Iwamoto
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with your point that individual users should always look out for themselves. However, I also agree with Brenda's point that "that companies who use online system with their customers to take additional measures to protect the identity of the users". It is not expected of customers to be able to understand the entirety of the security system(s) that houses their information. Furthermore, while I agree that individuals should always be cautious, it is important to note that scam techniques are always increasing in complexity, and that it may be hard not just for individuals, but also for larger companies to prevent security breaches. In other words, security breaches can happen because both methods of security as well as methods for breaching security are constantly developing.
Thank you for making this post, Richard. I agree, there are numerous ways that individual users can protect themselves from getting their information tampered with such as by using passwords on their networks and online accounts as well as making sure that the websites that they go to and email that they open are legitimate. However, I have seen people easily hack into protected networks. I have also heard people say that new viruses are developed and sent by companies selling their protective software to consumers to create a market for their product. With such forces at play, simple countermeasures are inadequate to protect one's cyber identity. What happens when the fail safes fail and those meant to police and protect become the ones that should be watched?
ReplyDelete- Joe Lugue
ere interesting post. It is apparent that the growth of technology has resulted with a major increase in data being sent and received by different parties. Not only does this result with new criminal activity conducted through cyberspace, but it also results with new implementation of policing and surveying methods.
ReplyDeleteJose Estrada
While it's true that many cyber crime can be prevented if users are better trained at protecting their data, these tips may be difficult to carry out for those who are not as tech savvy as today's generation are. Furthermore, I do still feel that companies, who consumer trusts with huge amount of personal information, should at least improve their security measures. They have access to more resources than the ordinary individuals to prevent such crimes. For example, I read that some companies now hire what is called "white hats" or a security firm who helps clients by attempting to hack into their critical system and expose weaknesses. Some businesses that handles electronic payments, like bank, are even required by regulators to conduct these "penetration testing" whether they do it themselves or hire a security firm to it for them.
ReplyDeleteOf course the demand for companies to increased security protection is not an excuse for individuals to handle their internet activities and transaction with less care. Cyber crime is a serious threat in this increasing digitalized age. I had my e-mail hacked a couple of weeks ago and it was such an inconvenience to me because I had to change all my passwords and run a virus check on the computer. However, its a relieve for me that the e-mail that was hacked was one that I do not use regularly or for important things.
- Jessica N. Siah
Wow, very interesting article. When it comes to surveillance and privacy breaches I'm fascinated with technology incidents as i love technology. Nonetheless, i like the fact that you brought up both sides of online privacy breaches, the consumer and business side. It is notable that most people blame big business for security breaches, but when in fact a lot of personal data loss can be attributed to careless consumer actions online as you mentioned in your article. Great article and nice content !
ReplyDelete- Jarred Boone