PC Security

While Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year, it is also a time when consumers can be careless and open themselves up to the risk of identity theft. This online shopping bonanza marks the start of the holiday season, and IdentityHawk wants to remind consumers to take precautions to protect their identities online and offline.

According to Jeff Paradise, executive director of IdentityHawk, "Cyber Monday kicks off the holiday shopping season and the season of being extra vigilant with online identity protection. Identity fraud can be detected online, but it doesn't necessarily start there."

Results from the 2011 Identity Fraud Survey Report conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research indicate that of all identity theft victims, 40% had their information misused while making an online purchase, compared to 13% for purchases made over the phone or through the mail.

"Consumers need to be aware that personal information is compromised in a wide variety of ways – ranging from stolen wallets, mail theft, purchases and financial transactions to computer hacking and large scale data base breaches," explained Karen Barney, director of programs for the Identity Theft Resource Center. "During the holidays it is important to remember to be especially vigilant in safeguarding your personal information."

In light of Cyber Monday and the start of the holiday shopping season, IdentityHawk provides the following protection tips for staying safe both online and offline. Read more

"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*!" – Dr. Strangelove in "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," Columbia Pictures (1964)

At last month's Black Hat, DefCon events…you could almost smell the cyber napalm in the morning.

While there are a lot of good things about Las Vegas (business-friendly policies), it's a logical location for a hacking, malware, cyber penetration convention. After all, it was founded on a fundamental human frailty … personal greed, beating the odds.

HINT: It's impossible to beat the odds!

Unfortunately, you also can't beat the odds when it comes to protecting personal, corporate and government secrets. Malicious and pain-in-the-behind bad guy hacking, hacktivism wins more often than the good guys. It's why no one with half a brain uses any of the ATM machines when the nearly 9,000 "attendees" are in town. They're hacked just for the heckovit!

It was here that Aruba wanted to demonstrate the strength of their cryptographic technology and wireless technology by provisioning the two events.

Now that takes … well, you know!Read more

"A $40 million computer tells you you're chasing an earthquake, but you don't believe." – Capt Mancuso, "The Hunt for Red October," Paramount Pictures (1990)

One of the toughest jobs in any country, any company is gathering, hoarding, protecting information that may give them an edge against "them."

And we must be doing a helluva' job because organizations and individuals are accumulating data and meta data at an ever-increasing rate.

The sheer volume that's coming at us is causing us to experience information overload…emails to answer, virtual friends to contact, YouTube videos to watch, games to play, movies to sneak, reports to read/digest, stuff you have to find/do in the virtual world…just in case.Read more

Nearly every day consumers are hearing updates about the constant cyber war with hackers. Lately we've been hearing about reputable news outlets using hacking as a means of research. And most recently about how Anonymous and Lulz Security have called for a boycott of PayPal. In short, this is scary stuff. Major corporations have been attacked solely because they reported on or reacted to illegal modifications to products. And the most frightening part? These small, loosely knit hacker groups are able to pull it off quickly and easily.

So what do you do if you fear your information might be in danger? To help consumers determine some next steps, Alan Wlasuk, CEO of 403 Web Security, a web security company, has compiled a list of steps consumers can take if they fear their personal information might have been compromised by one of these attacks.Read more

"When two hunters go after the same prey, they usually end up shooting each other in the back. And we don't want to shoot each other in the back." – Col. Douglas Mortimer, "For a Few Dollars More (Per Qualche Dollaro I Piu)", Constantin Film (1965)

NY Times writer, John Markoff, had just finished his book on the exploits/capture of hacker Kevin Mitnick about the same time we received a call from our boss at CERFnet (one of the first three ISPs in the U.S.) telling us we had to change our password because the fledgling West Coast arm of the Internet had been hacked.

We had 10 minutes to give him our new password that would be part of our online identity to access, contact the world.

That sucked!

We had just gotten rid of the mind-boggling CompuServe numbers and…well, we really liked that password.

Monco's comment came to mind, "Think you people need a new sheriff," but kept our mouth shut and changed the password. Read more

Advancements in mobile computing and lower hardware costs have literally moved people out of their offices and into airports, remote offices, customer facilities, conference rooms, libraries and home offices. Because of the migration, people work differently than they did years ago and require increased data mobility. Today, users are more likely to have access to a variety of computers; and, like their mobile phones, they want to take their data with them wherever they go.

The Internet has been pivotal in the growth of solutions that enable mobile users to transfer and share any type of digital data. Many inexpensive file transfer solutions (some are even free) have given users the freedom of having access to their data without having to carry their laptop with them. Email, FTP sites, CDs/DVDs, USB drives and cloud-storage services can all be used to transfer and share files. However, as we hear almost daily, they all have security, privacy and other issues that need to be considered.

Their limitations have underscored the compelling need for a better, cost-effective solution that doesn't trade-off data security for simplicity of access, doesn't limit the capacity of file transfers and doesn't have hidden, long-term fees. Read more

Like the TV commercials say, "Free is better." The only problem with the Internet is that it's not always free, and sometimes the price can be steeper than you'd ever want to pay.

That's the warning offered from Todd Drowlette, Chairman of classified listing site Move That Block. Drowlette said that his research into the consumer-to-consumer advertising space on the Internet revealed a wide variety of practices that exist for the sole purpose of deceiving the consumer.

"We all tend to have faith in the 'truth in advertising' laws protecting us from bait and switch scams," Drowlette said. "The problem is that the Internet is so saturated with bait and switch sites, the government would never have enough resources to prosecute them all. So, it's really up to consumers to beware and be aware of the kinds of sites that are out to get their money, get their email addresses or just flat out rip them off."

His tips include:

• Free or Premium – Before signing up with a listing site, surf it carefully to ensure that all their user listings are free. It's common for them to charge companies for display ads and banner, but that's only one of their revenue models. Many sites advertise free user listings, but in reality, only the first one is free and only after you sign up for a paid membership. Make sure you understand exactly what you will be getting for free before you sign up.Read more

"Be careful where you click" is the warning PC Tools issued throughout 2010 to drive consumers' online safety and protection. This message is more important than ever following Google's recent study of the year's top searches in their "Zeitgeist 2010: How the world searched" report.

PC Tools has identified the 7 most memorable cybercrime incidents associated with them, as we look back on how these top searched terms made cyber security headlines. Listed below are the highlights of this year's most astonishing cybercrime activities; ranging from small-scale pranks to security breaches of global impact:Read more

"I just stole fifty cars in one night! I'm a little tired, little "wired," and I think I deserve a little appreciation!" – Memphis, Gone in Sixty Seconds (Touchstone Pictures, 2000)

If you pay a lot of attention to your online security, you're probably not reading this. If you pay no attention, you're probably screwed! If you have a normal concern…how bad can it be? Take a minute and go to your favorite sites and search on the subject of online/onphone security.

You'll probably find that:

• there's an increase in the presence of malicious content on trusted sites – including search engines, blogs, bulletin boards, personal web sites, online magazines and mainstream news sites
• there are more than 170,000 new malware apps spotted every month
• more than 800,000 phishing emails were reported in one month at mid-year
• $4.5 bln lost to phishing in 2007
• $740 mln lost in 2 years to e-mail scams
• 1.45% of e-mails sent in May 2006 contained viruses
• 129 mln Americans received phishing e-mails
• 4.57% of Gmail filtered spam is false positive
• 22.5 million different samples of malware were recorded in June, double the year before
• New webpage infections were discovered by Sophos every 3.6 sec (4x faster than last year)