Entries by Robert Siciliano

Protect Your Automobile from Theft

Ever have your car stolen? I have. When I walked into the restaurants parking lot my car wasn’t in the spot where I parked.  At first I thought maybe I forgot where I parked it. Then an empty feeling came over me and I knew it was stolen. When the police arrived I asked them…

Online Gamers Risk Credit Card Fraud

The Sony Corporation has been providing consumers with stellar electronics since before the introduction of the Walkman. The past six months have been harsher for Sony, with attacks by hacktivists and numerous breaches of clients’ data. Many recent breaches involved usernames, passwords, email addresses, and in some cases, credit card numbers. Each compromised data point…

Myth: Apple Products Don’t Get Viruses

Have you ever bitten into an apple and found a worm? I have, and it’s yummy! Anyway, how many times have you heard, or even said, “I won’t get that computer virus because I have a Mac”?  While Mac users tend to feel somewhat insulated from viruses, it’s time for anyone who owns an Apple…

Doggy Door: Easy Burglar Penetration

Many years back I lived on a peninsula north of Boston in a small ocean view cottage. The band “Talking Heads” apparently lived there years earlier when they were starting out.  There’s a song or two they wrote that references the area. It’s a very cool place. The kind of place people think you can…

Financial Institutions Can Protect Their Clients Using “Defense in Depth”

Back in 2005, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) made security recommendations for banks and financial institutions in response to the increase of cybercrime. Since then, banks have implemented most, if not all, of these guidelines, and cyber criminals have responded by challenging each layer of security, by exploiting different technologies or coming up…

Beware Of Home Deed Scams

Home property deeds are documents showing home ownership and provided to home buyers and certified by county clerks or registrars after closing on a home purchase.  Deeds are generally public records and available for free or a small fee at the state or country registrar’s office. There 2 types of deed scams. The first involves…

Do You Own a Safe? Why Not?

Approximately two million homes are burglarized every year. That’s one home every fifteen seconds or so. Police only catch one out of ten burglars, which means the bad guys do it over and over again. Burglaries result in over $4.5 billion in losses annually, or over $2000 for the average victim. A safe can be…

FFIEC Mandates “System Of Layered Security” to Combat Fraud

For any cave-dwelling, living-under-a-rock, head-in-the-sand, naïve, under-informed members of society who aren’t paying attention, we have serious cyber-security issues on our hands. Black hat hackers, who break into networks to steal for financial gain, are wreaking havoc on banks, retailers, online gaming websites, and social media. Black hats cost these companies and their clients billions of dollars every year.…

Mobile Banking More Secure Than Computer E-Commerce?

Mobile banking is on the rise for more reasons than convenience sake. In truth, it’s more secure than traditional online baking.  Accessing your banks mobile website or using your banks mobile application is inherently more secure than using a computer. Why? Computers are big targets for thieves. PC’s mostly run on Microsoft’s most hacked operating…