How to protect yourself from identity theft

MANILA, Philippines - You don’t think it can happen to you – until it does and you become one of the growing number of victims of identity theft worldwide.

Through the years, identity thieves have become increasingly resourceful in the ways they steal personal information. They send out phishing email messages, or rummage through garbage dumps, even pretend to be representatives of credible organizations just so they can get enough information to take-over their victims’ bank or credit card accounts.

Once they do, in a matter of minutes, they can process a wide range of financial transactions such as credit card purchases or large withdrawals via ATM. Others would even apply for new credit cards to run up more charges. The resulting damage on the victim’s finances, psyche, and reputation can be devastating, to say the least.

Don’t wait until this happens to you. An ounce of prevention is still better than a pound of cure, so take the necessary steps to secure your personal information both online and off to protect yourself from such a crime.

Safeguard your personal information offline

Secure all official documents pertaining to your identity, from your birth certificate and marriage contract to your passport, as well as all your financial documents and records in a safe place at home, preferably under lock and key. Do a regular check of your documents to make sure that they are in good condition.

Limit the number of identification and credit cards that you carry in your wallet at any given time. At all times, be conscious of where your wallet is, whether it’s in your bag or your back pocket.

Go through every transaction on your bank and credit card statements carefully. Be on the alert for withdrawals that you don’t remember doing or credit card purchases at shops that you are unfamiliar with. These are possible signs that your information has been compromised. Contact your bank or credit card company immediately.

Don’t just throw official receipts, checks, bank statements, insurance forms, and other such documents in the trash can. Shred them into tiny bits, making sure that it bears no recognizable form of information.

Last but not least, do not just share your personal information to anybody. Do not reveal your birthday or your mother’s maiden name to someone who contacted you over the phone offering a deal. At work, at the doctor’s office, or in your child’s school, you might be asked to divulge personal information. Be clear as to how such information will be used – and what measures these institutions have in place to protect your data.

Secure your life online

Protect all the information you have in your gadgets, whether it’s a notebook, laptop, or smart phone, by enforcing a variety of security measures. Lock up your devices with a password. This way, you and only you can get to the information in your devices. In the event that your gadget is stolen, thieves cannot easily procure your data. Install anti-spy and anti-virus software on your devices. These will not only guard your online life against intrusions and infections, it will also alert you on any attempts to break into your firewall, depending on the program you used. The more security measures you use, the better.

Come up with strong passwords, using both lower and upper cases, for your various accounts, whether it’s your laptop, email, or bank account. Make it as unique as possible. It is also advisable to change your passwords every three months or so.

When you get a message from a person or organization that you are not familiar with, do not open the file that comes with it or click on the link attached. These attachments could possibly unleash a virus or spyware on your computer, making your data vulnerable to cyber-thieves.

Free Wi-Fi is good, but only if you are absolutely sure that your information will be protected. An encrypted website only protects the data you send to and from the site. A secure wireless network protects all the data you send on the network.

Examine the information you are sharing over social networks. Over-sharing can make the work of identity thieves easy, especially if you readily and regularly giving intimate details of your life. Make sure that the people who can access your information are really friends, not just acquaintances. Review your privacy settings regularly.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

IT security problems shift as data moves to ‘cloud’

The Internet “cloud” has become the hottest topic in computing, but the trend has created a new range of security issues that need to be addressed.

The cloud is associated with things like personal emails and music which can be accessed on computers and a range of mobile devices.

But the US military and government agencies from the CIA to the Federal Aviation Administration also use cloud systems to allow data to be accessed anywhere in the world and save money — and, ostensibly, to enhance security.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others are major players in the cloud, which seeks to transfer some of the data storage issues to more sophisticated data centers. Firms like Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.com offer cloud services for business.

Strategy Analytics forecasts US spending on cloud services to grow from $31 billion in 2011 to $82 billion by 2016.

But some experts say security implications of the cloud have not been fully analyzed, and that the cloud may open up new vulnerabilities and problems.

“If past is prologue I don’t think any system is absolutely secure,” said Stelios Sidiroglou-Douskos, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

“The analogy most people give is having a lock on your door. It’s not a guarantee no one will break in, but it’s a question of how much time it will take, and if your lock is better than your neighbor’s.”

In a cloud environment, “this makes the job of the attacker so much harder, which means the amateur hacker might be obsolete,” said Sidiroglou-Douskos, who is working on a US government-funded research project to develop “self-healing” clouds.

Potential gold mine for cybercriminals

But if a system is breached, analysts say, the amount of information lost could be far greater than what is in a single computer or cluster.

“You can have better defenses” in the cloud, “but if an attack happens, it’s highly amplified,” says Sidiroglou-Douskos.

The four-year MIT project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency seeks to develop systems that automatically fix data breaches in a manner similar to “human immunology,” says the researcher.

A number of cloud security breaches have raised concerns, including attacks on the Sony PlayStation Network, LinkedIn and Google’s Gmail service. One hacker recently claimed to have stolen credit card numbers from 79 major banks.

“Crimes target sources of value. Large company networks offer more targets to hackers,” says Nir Kshetri, a professor of economics who studies cybercrime at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

“Information stored in clouds is a potential gold mine for cybercriminals.”
Kshetri said in a paper submitted to the journal Telecommunications Policy that when questions come up, “the cloud industry’s response has been: Clouds are more secure than whatever you’re using now. But many users do not agree.”

“Fake clouds”

Marcus Sachs, former director of the Sans Technology Institute’s Internet Storm Center, said the cloud may be more secure but also opens up new questions.

“In the cloud, you don’t necessarily know where your data sits,” Sachs told AFP.

“That doesn’t make it less vulnerable to attack, but there are questions when it comes to (an) audit, or if you want to take the data back or destroy it, how do you know you’ve erased it?”

Sachs said that analysts have also discovered “fake clouds” which are offered as low-cost alternatives but are in fact operated by “criminal groups which monitor and steal the data.”

“We have seen instances of this not in the US, but in the former Soviet Union and in China,” he said.

Still, the cloud market is burgeoning, with companies and government agencies moving to either “public” clouds that are easily accessed or so-called “private clouds” that are segregated from the Internet.

Some analysts say other issues need to be resolved about cloud computing, such as who is liable if data is lost, and how data can be accessed for government investigations.

Outages have recently affected Apple’s and Amazon’s cloud services, causing some websites to be affected.

“Privacy, security and ownership issues in the cloud fall into legally gray areas,” Kshetri says.

Sidiroglou-Douskos said there is no single answer for people or companies choosing between cloud systems and holding the data themselves.

“If you are trying to protect yourself from the government, then having it in the public cloud makes it easier for them to get it,” he said.

“If your main worry is a hacker in Russia, maybe (cloud) infrastructure is better for your own security.”

source: interaksyon.com