Did you accidentally leave the back door open? This thought can be scary because you know that leaving the back door open at home could allow someone to enter your home and take your personal belongings. The same is true for a backdoor in the computer world. It is a vulnerability that gives an attacker…
Today’s commerce occurs very much online, with products and services ranging from A to Z. Hence, these many online merchants have hundreds of millions of people around the globe registered with them for convenient purchases. To verify authentication as the true user of these services, the registrant must supply personal data. If cyber criminals get…
Can you name 10 ways you can get hacked this summer? I can. Hotel Hacking Those hotel electronic card locks for doors aren’t as secure as you think. A criminal attaches a little electronic gizmo beneath the lock, and presto, he’s in your room. You can’t stop this, but you can make the burglary worthless…
With the prevalence of mobile devices, more than ever, it’s easy for us to share our lives with the world. And yes, social networks are all about staying in touch with friends and family, and sharing events in your life, but perhaps it’s too easy to share information? With just a few clicks, posts and…
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule requires that covered entities conduct a risk assessment of their healthcare organization. A risk assessment helps your organization ensure it is compliant with HIPAA’s administrative, physical, and technical safeguards. A risk assessment also helps reveal areas where your organization’s protected health information (PHI) could be at risk. Watch the Security…
Installing a home security system and keeping doors and windows locked is not the end of your crime prevention regimen; it’s only the beginning. And the beginning is YOU. You are your greatest weapon against crime, wherever you are located at any given moment. Unfortunately, that “mama bear” or “papa bear” mentality has been driven…
Though the breaking news of the Heartbleed vulnerability is a month old, this doesn’t mean that this “bug” has been squashed. There still remain about 318,000 servers that are vulnerable to this OpenSSL bug, according to security researchers, though this figure is about half of what it was a month ago. The Errata Security blog…
No one wants to be a victim of identity theft (at least not that I’m aware of). But even though we may say this, our actions don’t always indicate this—and actions speak louder than words. Some of this information may seem basic or like common sense, but these are still tactics that identity thieves utilize…
We also say we want to be safe online. Yet sometimes our actions betray our words—especially if we’re using simple, short passwords for our online sites. Passwords with less than eight characters are the easiest to crack, especially if they include a proper noun or a word that’s in a dictionary. Hackers especially love passwords…
Smartphone apps. There are apps wanting your location when they do not need it. Are there any apps requesting your location? You should deny them this information unless it’s absolutely necessary. Another way your phone knows where you are in terms of location is through the data of a photo. Put up lots of photos…
