Week 4 - THE THREAT OF ONLINE SECURITY: HOW SAFE IS OUR DATA

At the point internet enter in our life, our data is no longer safe. The main point is how do you keep your data and protect your data when under attacked. A lot of data which is confidential is valuable to others such as our personal details, bank account number and password, and company private information.

People with bad intention will use whatever techniques to break into our computer to steal our valuable data in order to satisfy their thirst. If our data is stolen, we will face a lot of problems in term of financial and law. People will use our data to commit crime and withdraw money from our bank account.

To prevent such threat, we need to learn about the cyber crime, prevention on it and how to protect your data when you aware of such crime is happening. Cyber crime can fall to 3 general categories which are Accidental Actions, Malicious Attacks and online fraud.

Accidental actions just mean by itself, people careless and unintentional leak its own confidential information by trap. A lot of trap is set up again users online by provided useless statement such as “your personal would not disclose to third party”. How do prove your own personal data is safe or not. There is no rules and regulation online. If there is, how do you go to sue this person who is unknown. If you know this person, how are you going to sue him or her if he is far distant from you. To avoid such unwanted consequences, you have to be careful whenever information need to be disclosed. Because of the paperless environment, you may want to print screen on the process.

Malicious attack is harm which is made by intention. It can be broken down to attack caused by malicious code or intentional misrepresentation. Misrepresentation often regard to online fraud and identity theft. Whereby, malicious code is code which is made to intrude into computer or break down a computer to malfunction. It’s called hacking or cracking in the internet. It included computer viruses, Trojan, spywares, and denial of service (DOS) attack. These malicious codes often enter to our computer through infection of removable drive (pendrive), network, and online cable. Since we are not technician or IT educated, we only can depend on the anti virus provided on the market such as Norton and Pc-cilin. to protect our computer from intrusion. When you discover someone is enter into your computer without authority. What I recommend is pull the internet line immediately to stop the connectivity. Of cause, this is not a good idea for long term, what you have to do is update your software to latest version. If it is severe, you better consult a professional technician.