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Latest "Cyber Data Security" Posts
You already know that every word you type on your browser is being tracked and used to profile and deliver highly-relevant advertisements to you (Big Brother Lives in Your Browser). And you know that most websites install “cookies” onto your computer in order to store relevant information about you (account numbers) that make surfing more convenient, and to gather information that allows advertisers to know more about you. You probably even know how to delete them.
But new research has shown that deleting cookies doesn’t always help. A new breed of cookies, called supercookies, can reconstruct all of your profile history even after the cookie has been deleted. MSN.com and Hulu.com just got caught using supercookies to track your surfing habits in stealth mode (you have no way of knowing that it’s happening, and you can’t do anything about it). The Wall Street Journal had this to say about supercookies and history stealing:
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Browser, Cookies, history stealing, Privacy, Sileo, super cookies, supercookies, Tracking, Wall Street Journal, WSJ
Why You Should Share Facebook Privacy Settings with Friends
A true friend does more than just post updates about their conquests on your wall. They share information with you that makes your life better, even if it isn’t exactly what you want to hear. And you do the same for them. But are your friends unwittingly sharing too much information about you with others (strangers, advertisers, app developers, scammers)? Probably. For example, if they (or you) haven’t customized your privacy settings lately, you are giving Facebook permission to:
- Publish your name, photo, birth date, hometown and friend list to everyone?
- Indirectly share your restricted data with outsiders through your friends?
- Let your friends check you in to embarrassing locations where you aren’t?
- Post your Likes as advertisements on friends’ walls using your name?
- Authorize Google to index, access and share your information on the web?
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Customizing Facebook, facebook privacy, Facebook Safety, Facebook Security, Facebook Settings, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Keynote Speaker, Online/Social Media Privacy, Sileo, Social Media Speaker, social networking, Social Networking Speaker
I love my job as a keynote speaker. To be honored as one of only 570 Certified Speaking Professionals on the planet this past month was icing on the cake, and confirmation that we’d finally made it through that which almost destroyed our family.
Just a few years ago I thought I might go to jail for crimes that someone else committed using my identity. I lost nearly everything, including my business, my reputation and lots of money. Who would have thought then that all of the pain we experienced as a family would be turned into a highly satisfying career as an author and professional keynote speaker? Every day I get to go to work with the enviable conviction of empowering people to protect their privacy from identity theft, social media exposure and human manipulation. I get to steer people and corporations away from making the significant mistakes I did. It is vastly fulfilling.
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Digital Reputation & Trust, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Certified Speaking Professional, CSP, Keynote, National Speakers Association, NSA, Sileo, Speaker
In the first part of this article series, we discussed why it is so important to protect your business data, including the first two steps in the protection process. Once you have resolved the underlying human issues behind data theft, the remaining five steps will help you begin protecting the technological weaknesses common to many businesses.
- Start with the humans.
- Immunize against social engineering.
Posted in Burning Questions (Video), Cyber Data Security, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Video Tips by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Data Privacy", Business Security, data security, Detection Fraud, Engineering Social, Fraud, Fraud Detection, Fraud Expert, Fraud Speaker, Fraud Training, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, information, John Sileo, Keynote, Keynote Speaker, Part 2, Part II, Prevention, Privacy, professional speaker, Protection, Security, social engineering, social engineering expert, Speaker, Technology, Training Fraud
Everybody wants your data. Why? Because it’s profitable, it’s relatively easy to access and the resulting crime is almost impossible to trace. Take, for example, Sony PlayStation Network, Citigroup, Epsilon, RSA, Lockheed and several other businesses that have watched helplessly in the past months as more than 100 million customer records have been breached, ringing up billions in recovery costs and reputation damage. You have so much to lose.
To scammers, your employees’ Facebook profiles are like a user’s manual about how to manipulate their trust and steal your intellectual property. To competitors, your business is one poorly secured smartphone from handing over the recipe to your secret sauce. And to the data spies sitting near you at Starbucks, you are one unencrypted wireless connection away from wishing you had taken the steps in this two-part article.
Posted in Burning Questions (Video), Cyber Data Security, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy, Video Tips by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Data Privacy", "Identity Theft, Business Security, data security, Fraud, information, John Sileo, Keynote, Prevention, Privacy, Protection, Security, social engineering, Speaker, Technology
Businesses often make social engineering (or fraud) training boring! And that’s bad for your bottom line, because no one ends up remembering how to protect your organization against threats like data theft, corporate espionage or social networking exposure.
Too often, fraud and social engineering workshops cover just the concepts that define fraud rather than the feelings that signal it’s actually in process at the moment. The key to training your executives, employees and even customers on fraud is to let them experience what it feels like to be conned. In other words, they need to actually be socially engineered (manipulated into giving away their own private information) several times throughout the training so that they begin to reflexively sense fraud as it is happening. Like learning to throw a ball, there is no substitute for doing it for yourself. Fraud detection is similar; it takes actually doing it (or having it done to you) to fully understand the warning signs. Anything less will leave your audience yawning and uneducated.
Posted in Burning Questions (Video), Cyber Data Security, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Video Tips by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Detection Fraud, Engineering Social, Fraud Detection, Fraud Expert, Fraud Speaker, Fraud Training, identity theft expert, John Sileo, Keynote Speaker, professional speaker, social engineering, social engineering expert, Training Fraud
Victim of a Cyber Attack? What You Should Tell Customers
It seems like every day consumers are learning of data breeches from companies like Sega, Sony and Google. Major corporations like these tend to have the funds and resources to recover from an attack, but for small businesses, that’s often not the case.
A slow response and lack of communication with customers are among the missteps many small businesses make when facing an attack, both of which can cause irreparable damage to the business.
“When consumers are a victim of ID fraud based on interaction with a small business, 1 in 3 never come back,” said Phil Blank, senior analyst for security and fraud at Javelin Strategy & Research.
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Business Fraud, Citibank, Citigroup, Data Breach, Expert, Fox, Identity Theft Prevention, john, PlayStation, Sileo, Sony
Everybody wants your data, especially when you are in the business of meetings. Your data doesn’t just have a high face value (e.g., the attendee data, including credit card numbers that you collect and store in your online registration system), it also has a high resale value .
Here is how the theft is most often committed in your industry:
- Competitors hire one of your employees and they leave with a thumb drive full of confidential files, including client lists, personally identifying information on talent and employees, financial performance data, etc.
- Social engineers (con artists) mine your employee’s Facebook profiles to gain a heightened level of trust which allows them to manipulate your human assets
- Cyber criminals hack your lax computer network or sniff the unprotected wireless connections you and your employees use while traveling (Starbucks, hotels, airports).
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Conference Speaker, Conferences, CSAE, data security, Data Security Expert, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Keynote Speaker, meeting planners, Meeting Professionals, Meeting Security, Meetings, Meetings Industry, MPI, Privacy, Security, SGMP, Society of Government Meeting Professionals
I just finished delivering a keynote speech for the Society of Government Meeting Professionals (SGMP) at their annual convention on identity theft and protecting data in the meetings industry. Data security is a top concern in this industry because it is probably one of the most highly-targeted groups for identity theft, social media fraud, data breach and social engineering. Here’s why:
- Meeting professionals collect, store and transmit massive amounts of private data on attendees
- Data theft risk skyrockets when travel is involved, which is a frequent occurrence for meeting planners and professionals
- Meeting professionals are busy nearly 24 hours a day once they are onsite for the conference or meeting, meaning that they are highly distracted
- A single data breach of attendee data can put the organization responsible for the event out of business due to excessive costs and tight compliance regulations
Posted in Cyber Data Security, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Conference Speaker, Conferences, CSAE, data security, Data Security Expert, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Keynote Speaker, meeting planners, Meeting Professionals, Meeting Security, Meetings, Meetings Industry, MPI, Privacy, Security, SGMP, Society of Government Meeting Professionals
