Carrying multiple personal devices is a pain and, yet, the fear of giving away critical company data is a nightmare.
For most of us, being connected equals being productive. However, this simple equation becomes complex when one has to juggle personal devices with those issued by our employers. Paramount in an employer’s mind is the protection of the company’s critical and confidential business data but they don’t want to alienate employees by being too restrictive on using their personal smartphones and tablets.
Recent research has found that nearly three out of four adults don’t protect their smartphones with security software and these same people often use their devices to access social media and websites that attract cybercrooks. Poorly-secured devices can be easily accessed by hackers who are becoming evermore sophisticated and ferocious.
Your national security depends on the job you do educating your children.
Here’s an alarming wakeup call: a task force led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York’s school system has issued a stunning report. They warn that the nation’s security and economic prosperity are at risk if America’s schools don’t improve. The task force consists of 30 members with backgrounds in education and foreign affairs and was organized by the Council on Foreign Relations. As reported by the Associated Press, the report cautions that far too many schools fail to adequately prepare students and that “The dominant power of the 21st century will depend on human capital. The failure to produce that capital will undermine American security.” A shortage of skilled workers is expected to get worse as the current work force retires. The task force said the State Department and U.S. Intelligence agencies face critical shortfalls in the fields of foreign language, science, defense and aerospace. And so, it’s not a stretch to realize that no matter how diligent we are about educating people and businesses to protect their identities and information and to develop safe habits, the problem is ever so much more complex.
Holiday travel brings various levels of challenge and stress. Don’t let identity theft risk add to your anxiety.
Here are five tips to help you to avoid becoming a victim while on vacation:
1. Stop your mail and newspaper. Avoid letting un-invited credit invitations sit in your mail box. You can stop your mail by phone or online at usps.com. Also, ask a trusted neighbor to watch for package & parcel deliveries and to hang on to them until you return. If you receive a daily newspaper, put your subscription on hold. A pile of un-retrieved newspapers in your driveway is a “Welcome” sign to thieves.
2. Don’t advertise that you’re on vacation. Make sure if you are going to post vacation updates on your e-mail, on social networking websites, or on your voice mail greeting, that you post generically, no specifics. Put a few lights on timers so that your home doesn’t look unoccupied for the entire time you’re gone. Replace the front porch light bulb.
This post is a summary of an excellent article appearing in USA Today By Byron Acohido, Scott Martin and Jon Swartz.
It’s a heated competition to tap what many experts predict will be the next big Internet gold rush — online advertising — Google and Facebook laid down very big bets, during a week when European regulators are hashing out strict new rules that could prevent much of what the tech giants seek to do.
Google signaled its intent to begin correlating data about its users’ activities across all of its most popular services and across multiple devices. The goal: to deliver those richer behavior profiles to advertisers.
Likewise, Facebook announced it will soon make Timeline the new, more glitzy user interface for its service, mandatory. Timeline is designed to chronologically assemble, automatically display and make globally accessible the preferences, acquaintances and activities for most of Facebook’s 800 million members.
Healthcare data breaches are on the rise, 32% over last year. Though some may find this to be alarming, there is a school of thought that this is actually good news and that we are identifying breaches that perhaps went unnoticed in the past. However, the fact remains that breaches are on the rise, statistically, and many organizations fear they lack the infrastructure and budget to protect patient privacy.
The study found the reasons for growing data breaches in healthcare organizations to include:
employee mistakes and sloppiness
lost or stolen mobile computing devices
unintentional employee action
third-party error
On average, it is estimated that data breaches cost benchmarked organizations $2,243,700. This represents an increase of $183,526 from the 2010 study, despite healthcare organizations’ increased compliance with federal regulations. Respondents in the study noted relying less on an “ad hoc’ process to prevent or detect data breach incidents and are relying more on policies, procedures and security.
Freezing your credit is the number one way to protect against financial identity theft. If everyone in the country applied for a Credit Freeze, identity thieves would quickly be out of business. At least, a major part of their business. Take 30 minutes and lower your chances of identity theft drastically (see the online Freeze links at the bottom of this post).
To go directly to placing a security freeze on your 3 bureau accounts, page down to the bottom section.
Every time you establish new credit (e.g., open up a new credit card, store account or bank account, finance a car or home loan, etc.), an entry is created in your credit file which is maintained by companies like Experian, Equifax and TransUnion (listed below). The trouble is, with your name, address and social security number, an identity thief can pretend to be you and can establish credit (i.e., spend your net worth) in your name.
There are complete industries built around collecting, massaging and selling your data – your name, phone number, address, spending patterns, surfing habits, net worth, the age of your children, the magazines you buy, etc. Companies buy bits of your privacy so that they can knowledgeably market products to you that you are likely to purchase. The problem is, that data, once collected, is often breached by hackers who want to know more about you.
To minimize the amount of your personal information bought and sold on the data market, begin “opting out”. Opting out is the process of notifying organizations that collect your personal information to stop sharing it with other organizations. “Pre-approved” credit card offers (i.e., financial junk mail) are a major source of identity theft. Those mailers give thieves an easy way to set up credit card accounts in your name without your consent. They spend money on the card and default on the balance, leaving you with the mess of proving that you didn’t make the purchases. The solution is to opt out of receiving pre-approved credit, home loan and insurance offers as well as mass marketing databases.
The IRS admittedly has little control over protecting your tax returns against identity theft. The problem is too big, the data too widely available, prevention too rarely attended to until it’s already too late. Your tax returns are the Holy Grail of identity theft because they contain virtually every piece of information a fraudster needs to BECOME you. But you don’t have to be a victim; you simply need to take responsibility for what is rightfully yours – your tax return information and your identity. The changes aren’t difficult, they simply require you read through this document so that you recognize the risks. Once that’s done, you simply avoid the highest-risk behaviors.
Here is a comprehensive list of frauds, scams and high risk tax-time practices.
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