Daily you are at risk. Spammers, hackers, phishers, pirates, and cyber-terrorists and vandalists are accessing the internet and possibly thousands of corporate and privately owned computers in search of information. Information that will give them access to likes, dislikes, research habits, account data and even potentially enough personal information to know where you live, what you ate for breakfast, and what you were wearing when you made it.
This seemingly Orwellian scenario is happening in homes and businesses across the globe. According to the College of Southern Maryland’s computer gurus Michael Conte and John Wilson, learning how to protect your business, your family and your personal information may be one of the most important resolutions you can make this year. “The number of internet security breaches in 2006 is staggering,” says Conte, a systems administrations manager in CSM’s information technology services department and instructor of the college’s information security basics training program for employees.
“If you look at colleges and universities alone, you see the University of Alaska Fairbanks lost 38,941 student and faculty names, social security numbers and email addresses; Ohio University lost 137,000 social security numbers and 60,000 health records; and the University of Texas Austin lost 197,000 student names and social security numbers and these are just some of the ones that made the national news.
In the corporate world, Aetna lost 130,000 health insurance client records and the Veteran’s Administration recently announced that an employee’s stolen laptop contained 382,000 veteran’s social security numbers and information.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Conte. More than 100 million information security breaches have occurred since the Choice Point breach of February 2005 according to Privacy Rights Clearing House, a nonprofit consumer information and advocacy clearinghouse. For the most current figure see http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm.
In addition, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) notes that while every state has been affected by information and internet security breaches, only 23 states currently have breach notification laws. In 11 of these states notification only occurs when the breach may adversely harm the consumer. Currently, Maryland does not have a security breach law on the record but it does allow citizens to check credit reports once a year, which is important according to security experts because it gives consumers the ability to verify existing accounts and check for fraudulent applications and accounts. But, a once-a-year credit check can only accomplish so much. A better approach, according to CSM’s Information Technology Services Instructor John Wilson is to prevent personal and business security breaches in the first place through vigilance, persistence and training.
“Eighty percent of personal computers are infected or affected by some sort of spybot, adware and or viruses,” said Wilson. Personal computers in particular, or those that are shared by multiple users, are particularly at risk to scanning by hackers and internet pirates because they may be set up for ease of use rather than security.
Wilson suggests the following quick tips to easily increase the security of any computer:
• Install a two-way firewall: “Windows contains a one-way firewall,” says Wilson. “The problem with a one-way firewall is that it only prevents other computers from accessing your network; it doesn’t stop