If I could give the world a gift this holiday season, it would be to make the world a safer place to trust. You deserve to know whether or not you can trust the politicians you elect, the advice you receive from your doctor and whether or not you can entrust your privacy to the websites and businesses you use every day.
Identity theft, cyber stalking, and “big data” surveillance—these byproducts of the information economy make it hard to rest easy. Every day in the news we hear about another scam, another breach of corporate data that victimizes more than 11 million Americans a year. But you don’t have to be a statistic!
Want more tips on how to protect yourself, your family and your wealth during the holiday season? Take a few minutes to read 12 Days to a Safe Christmas.
Premera BlueCross BlueShield
Health insurance company Premera BlueCross BlueShield said in March that it had discovered a breach in January that affected as many as 11.2 million subscribers, as well as some individuals who do business with the company. The breach compromised subscriber data, which includes names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, bank account information, addresses and other information.
February Cyber Breach
Multi-Bank Cyberheist
In February, a billion-dollar bank cyberheist was discovered, affecting as many as 100 banks around the world. The breaches, discovered by Kaspersky Lab, infiltrated the banks’ networks using tactics such as phishing and gaining access to key resources, including employee account credentials and privileges. The cybercriminal ring, known as Carbanak, then used those credentials to make fraudulent transfers and make hijacked ATM machines appear legitimate as they funneled more than $1 billion into their own pockets. Anthem
Anthem revealed a breach in February that exposed 80 million patient and employee records. Anthem said the breach occurred over several weeks, beginning in December 2014, and could have exposed names, date of birth, Social Security numbers, health-care ID numbers, home addresses, email addresses, employment information, income data and more. It said it did not believe banking information was taken. The Wall Street Journal reported that Anthem had not encrypted the data that was accessed by hackers.
Come on, admit it. Don’t you feel just a little satisfaction watching 37 million adulterers exposed in the Ashley Madison hack? “They do kind of deserve to be cheated just a bit for being cheaters,” someone in one of my keynote speeches commented.
In this case, the hackers weren’t seeking money, they were seeking revenge. Their goal was to get Ashley Madison to shut down the site because they said it wasn’t living up to it’s own privacy policy (they weren’t). But to side with the hackers is a bit like saying it’s okay to pepper spray customers to keep them from going into a store you’re morally opposed to. In other words, be careful when you condone the use of customers as pawns to fuel change. You just might be the next customer to become a victim, and your data could be just as sensitive (your medical records, divorce proceedings, kids’ geographical location or your online video viewing habits).
Product Review: Are identity theft monitoring services worth it?
Yes, identity theft services can be well worth the investment, especially if you ever become a victim. Imagine that your Social Security number is part of a national breach like Anthem or the Office of Personnel Management. Or it’s stolen out of your tax preparer’s office, scavenged from your trash or skimmed from your iPad as you surf on a free Wi-Fi connection. In most cases, you have no idea that your digital identity has fallen into unethical hands, usually those of organized crime, who replicate and resell it in seconds.
I’ve had dozens of media requests for interviews and countless more email inquiries from people concerned about the Target data breach. At first, everyone just wanted to know details of how it happened, how big the breach was, and what they should do about it if their credit cards were at risk. Now that the initial shock of it is over, we are on to a bigger question:
How do we keep breach from negatively affecting so many Americans?
Breach will always happen. If it’s digital, it’s hackable. It’s coming to light that the Target breach may have been due to the computer access an HVAC WORKER (no, not an entire company, an individual WORKER) had to Target’s systems. While there is no guaranteed way of preventing fraud, there is a pretty reliable answer out there, and it’s been around for decades. That answer is for the US to finally catch up to more than 80 countries around the world and start using chip and PIN enabled credit cards, also known as EMV, smart cards, or microchip cards.
When the finance chief of a London hedge fund got an urgent phone call about possible fraud on a Friday afternoon just as he was preparing to leave work, he honestly thought he was doing the right thing by giving the caller the information requested. Wouldn’t any decent CFO want to stop fraud if it was in his power to do so? That way, he could rest easy for the weekend, knowing he had saved the company from damage. Imagine the feeling in the pit of his stomach when he turned on his computer Monday morning to find that 742,668 pounds ($1.2 million) was missing!
That’s what happened to Thomas Meston of Fortelus Capital Management LLP in December of 2013. He received a phone call from someone claiming to be from Coutts, the London-based hedge fund’s bank, and the caller warned him there may have been fraudulent activity on the account. Meston was reluctant, but agreed to use the bank’s smart card security system to generate codes for the caller to cancel 15 suspicious payments.
Over the next ten years, wearable technology could change the way you live even more than smartphones have. Wearable technology combines all of the tracking, collecting and communicating power of current mobile devices with an intimate level of personal information captured in real-time. Common wearables include: Fitness Bands, GPS-enabled Cameras, Digital Glasses, Medical Devices and Smart Watches. Wearable technology can be a force for good, but you need to consider the privacy and security implications of the devices as well.
For the moment, wearable technology is more like a trendy hobby for early adopters than it is a means of recording highly accurate & useful information. In the future, businesses will likely utilize wearables to monitor everything from hours spent working to employee whereabouts throughout the day. It is this enterprise usage that will ultimately fuel the adoption of wearable technology in the consumer market. For now, your smart watch is a fun and shiny object with a few killer apps much like the computer back when email was introduced. Ten years from now, you might wonder how you lived without the increased convenience and connectivity.
For the second time in less than a year, the Federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has experienced a significant government data breach. In this go-round, it is believed that the data of nearly 4 million past and current federal workers were compromised. This is a staggering number, and an even greater disaster. The data at risk includes “personally identifiable information” (PII) such as people’s names, Social Security numbers, dates and places of birth, and current and former addresses.
In a separate, but related breach in which hackers gained access to information on military personnel seeking security clearances, data thieves may also have accessed information about job assignments, performance ratings and training information, applicants’ financial histories and investment records, children’s and relatives’ names, foreign trips taken and contacts with foreign nationals, past residences and names of neighbors and close friends. Pretty much everything a foreign spy agency would need to compromise national security.
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