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If you’re the head of a company, it’s your duty to be no less than a privacy expert. Cyber criminals are betting on the fact that you aren’t one, and your whole company could suffer if you don’t take action to become one.
We’ve discussed before the necessity of keeping employees well-trained against cyber attacker’s tricks, such as spear-phishing. Well, it turns out that the big bosses are actually even more likely to fall for social engineering attacks according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.
The article quoted a study by Verizon that indicates these executives are often exempt from company-wide security rules and are more likely to open email or click on links that expose their company’s secure information. Especially at a time when so many are hit with phony emails, no one can afford to be lax on cyber security. CEOs and other high-level bosses are usually highly visible, public-facing, have access to proprietary information, and are often disengaged from the online security process: in other words, they are the perfect target.
Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Cyber Security, online privacy, Privacy Expert
We trust our information with companies every day, but online privacy protection may not be their highest priority.
Some of the most widely-used tech companies in the world do a miserable job of protecting users’ online privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has gathered data on the privacy protection efforts practiced by organizations like WordPress, Apple, Comcast and others (many of whom have also been victims of data security breaches recently) for its annual “report card.” Then it awarded stars to the companies as if they were hotels.
The results are abysmal for anyone who still thinks that corporate behemoths have their users’ best interests at heart.
Stars were given based on how well a company performed in various categories. Out of 18 companies measured, only two passed with flying colors in all six categories: Twitter and internet service provider Sonic.net. The rest scored poorly. Facebook earned 3 out of 6 stars, Apple and AT&T scored one star and Verizon struck out with zeroes across the board. If this were a real report card, most of these companies would have been expelled.
Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: online privacy, online privacy protection
Do you know your social media privacy rights as they pertain to your workplace?
They will be different depending on where you live because the laws vary from state to state. Utah recently became the fifth state to put into effect such a law that governs the rights of both employees and employers. Legislation has also been introduced or is pending at the Federal level and in 35 states.
This has become a hot topic because more than 90 percent of employers use social media sites to help screen applicants. Since applicants have the ability to determine their online privacy settings to decide what is out there for public viewing, some employers have asked for access to their private social media content to get the real picture.
Posted in Social Media Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: online privacy, Social Media Privacy
Anthony Weiner is notorious for a gaffe made on Twitter, but will his online reputation recover?
I’m sure everyone remembers the infamous 2011 incident when Representative Weiner became something of a national punchline for lewd tweets that revealed his “private data,” so to speak.
Or do we remember?
At the time, Weiner’s indiscretions left him a laughingstock and a near-disgrace in one fell swoop. Now, as he ramps up a possible New York City mayoral campaign, he’s returned to the same social platform that almost cost him his political career. Is it possible that we will forget and forgive so soon?
A natural byproduct of our 140-character driven world is that everything is always old news. By the time the next tweet or Facebook post appears, we have forgotten the last one. Our online reputation, on the other hand, never disappears. And at some point, we will again value character in our public figures – making digital reputation a permanent, if often inaccurate, representation of that character.
Posted in Digital Reputation & Trust by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Online Reputation
USA Today recently opined that the venture capital flooding into the cyber security marketplace is justified. Unlike the dotcom boom and bust cycle of the late 90s, it says, the current spending on securing information capital is justified, as the Internet and corporate networks are in dire need of better protection. Without even a moment’s hiccough, this is undeniably true.
Take some recent cases in point: China hacking into the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, or the Syrian Electronic Army cracking into the Associated Press and 60 Minutes. If you’re looking for corporate examples, look no further than the $45 million stolen by cyber thieves via MasterCard pre-paid debit cards. Cyber security is the new darling of the Obama administration, the media and Sandhill Road because all three are finally learning how much they have to lose (or in the case of VCs, gain) by ignoring cyber security.
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Cyber Security, Cybersecurity, John Sileo, Venture Capital
The Syrian Electronic Army strikes again, in a case that could have been avoided through anti-fraud training.
Satirical news site The Onion has a reputation for fooling people with its outrageous fake headlines, but earlier this month, it was The Onion’s turn to get tricked. It may not be the Associated Press, but The Onion’s Twitter feed has more than 4 million followers, and that’s undoubtedly part of why the SEA targeted it in another phishing scam that led to that account getting compromised. As it had previously, the SEA used the opportunity to post its own damaging tweets before order was restored (although one questions the wisdom of crafting fake posts for an organization known for being sarcastic anyway).
On its official tech blog, The Onion gave a detailed description of how the hack took place.
Posted in Fraud Detection & Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: anti-fraud training
The Pentagon has now openly accused China of launching online attacks on the U.S. Will your cyber security training withstand the mounting threat?
There is no more dancing around it now. Although there have been mentions and whispers of Chinese-based cyber attacks in the past, China has now been publicly named as responsible for performing cyber espionage on American cyber soil. This move away from the indirect, diplomatic approach of addressing cyber espionage and into a more direct dialogue signals a new direction in the cyber threat debate.
The language coming from the government on this is chilling, and although we’ve known something about state-sponsored cyber espionage for some time, to see it written in the DOD’s Annual Report to Congress will make you think twice about the imminent threat and the depth of your cyber security training.
Posted in Cyber Data Security by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Cyber Security, cyber security training
Airtight fraud prevention is not possible but just how vulnerable are we if thieves can heist $45 million in a matter of hours?
We recently got a taste of the possible consequences of unchecked hacker prowess following an ATM scam of catastrophic proportions. An international group of thieves managed to walk away with money from the prepaid debit cards of innocent users in countries all over the world.
U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch announced charges against eight defendants on Thursday. Thieves hacked into banks’ systems in the United Arab Emirates and Oman to increase the amount available on pre-paid MasterCard debit cards. Then they used those cards to withdraw money from ATMs. This heist shows that cyber security in the global financial system is only as strong as the weakest link, and the weakest link in this an other breaches is usually a human being.
While the hackers were sophisticated in gathering and manipulating information within the banks, common criminals made the ATM withdrawals. Lynch described the group as a
“virtual criminal flash mob.” Money.CNN.com states that during the first attack in December 2012, the New York group allegedly
withdrew $400,000 in 750 separate ATM transactions in more than 140 different NY locations in less than three hours.Though eight of the members involved have been caught and police throughout the world are working to put this right, the sheer technical scope of the attack shows how sophisticated hackers have become.
Posted in Fraud Detection & Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Cyber Security, Fraud Prevention, online fraud prevention
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