Security Leaks Everywhere

Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

Security Leaks Everywhere

There are fake (portable) cell towers popping up across America. [CW, BI and here for best tech info]. I don't mean cell towers disguised as fake trees. I mean people are using technology like this Stingray to intercept cell phones, track and hack. The NSA can do this without fake towers.

On the heels of the celeb hacking event (#Frappening2014), the Target and now Home Depot security breaches, and the 1.2 billion identities (emails, passwords, etc.) that the Russian mob collected, one has to wonder what's going on.

Part of what is going on is that people and businesses don't really pay attention to security, because it-can't-happen-here or it-won't-happen-to-me or probably because too lazy and it costs too much. Well, the other side of that coin is the liability -- Identity theft (that could take you years and thousands to fix); debit card liability (because debit/ATM cards aren't protected like credit cards); changing all your bill pay info; and so much more. This may seem like inconvenience but most people are shielded from the really dark side of this.

Take some simple steps right now. If you used a debit/ATM card at Home Depot, check with your bank. [More detailed info here] Then "be proactive and withdraw money from that checking account now. You should avoid keeping any more money in that account than absolutely necessary -- just enough to cover transactions coming through the account."

Set up alerts for your credit cards, checking accounts and debit/ATM.

Change your passwords regularly. Do not use words. Use capital letters with numerals and special characters if you can. [More detail here]

For cripes sake, don't use one password for all of your logins!!!!!

Use anti-virus AND anti-malware regularly. Update your operating system - keep it current. You have no idea how many people DON'T do this because it is an inconvenience. well, guess what, not only is every keystroke being logged but the bad guys use your infected computer to make life miserable for others. So thanks for being lazy. (Just box that computer back up if you can't use it properly ;)!

Enable 2 factor authentication wherever possible.

Start with this.

I imagine that you are mad at Home Depot and Target for the breach. Security is a game of cat and mouse. Every day in every way it is white hat versus black hat. Every software has holes. But you are mad at them and you don't even do the simple stuff listed above to protect yourself, so see that mirror.....



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