You’ve heard of “flash mobs” when a group of people suddenly get together in some form of public place for a performance of some sort generally in the name of fun. They are formed when someone posts something on Facebook or Twitter and text messages begin to go viral. All of a sudden a time…
The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), a formal government interagency body empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions, recently issued a supplement to the 2005 document “Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment” effective January 2012. The FFIEC has acknowledged that cybercrime is increasing and financial…
To all you security companies out there, listen up: “identity theft protection” has become an overused and abused marketing term, which is often used to sell a product or service that doesn’t actually protect users from identity theft. It’s like labeling food “natural” when we know it’s not “organic.” It’s incorrect at best and a…
Nielsen reports “We are just at the beginning of a new wireless era where smartphones will become the standard device consumers will use to connect to friends, the internet and the world at large. The share of smartphones as a proportion of overall device sales has increased 29% for phone purchasers in the last six months;…
You’ve probably heard the phrase “a fox watching the henhouse.” Today, that applies to people on the inside of organizations who work in trusted positions, and who use those positions to steal client or employee information for their own personal gain. As much as 70% of all identity theft is committed by individuals with inside…
Mobile payment has been around for years in numerous forms for purchases such as downloading music, ringtones and various other services and is now gaining traction for retail purchases in the U.S. But its implementation in the U.S. is a bit slower due to a lack of standardization of payment methods and the overall security…
We’ve heard this story before, but unfortunately it happens over and over again. Social media and dating sites are overrun with criminals who pose as legitimate, upstanding individuals, but are really wolves in sheep’s clothing. In Florida, a man named Martin Kahl met a 51-year-old woman and they developed an online romance. A quick search…
In a story that could have come right out of a movie, a widely respected police officer turned out to be a Mexican national who stole an American identity and moved to Alaska to become a cop. I’ll bet Sarah Palin didn’t see this one coming. Fox News reports that the identity thief had been…
In Illinois in an apartment building that just happens to be in yelling distance from a police station, a man jumped from his second floor window screaming for help. Fortunately the police were able to catch the two guys who invaded his apartment. Apparently he didn’t have a home security alarm system, which is an…
The ticker tape of data breaches in the last few months has been astounding. Many have called 2011 “The Year of The Hacker“ and that prognostication has rung true, without question. Halfway through the year, data breaches are an incessant news story. And despite the constant stream of bad news, consumers continue divulging a tremendous…
