--Originally published at TC2027 – Surviving CS
We hear it almost every day: a new company has its security breached and tons of data is stolen, the result is irreversible because millions of dollars are lost and trust is now broken. Computer security goes from Equifax hack making millions of peoples anxious, a celebrity photos/videos leaks or your computer is kidnapped by some nasty hacker who demands money in order to give you back all your data!
I show these three examples because these are the risk of dealing with a digital culture; this may sound terrifying but protecting yourself and start learning how to secure your data is important. So yes, these three attacks also show how vulnerable we all are: a huge credit company like Equifax, a Hollywood celebrity or your workplace is not exempt of someone trying to steal your information.
So how these attacks could be avoided?
- Equifax – This one is kinda tricky because from what I read about the hack there was a vulnerability in a framework that they used and it wasn’t patched this allowed a hacker to exploit this in order to gain access to the servers. So the main reason was that they didn’t stay updated with their software.
- Celebrity hack or anyone – So all your private photos were stolen and publish online or someone guessed your Facebook password and now is posting embarrassing status about you. These one is so simply to avoid: create longer and hard to remember passwords, you don’t even have to remember them: use a password manager – my personal favorite is Dashlane.
- My computer is kidnapped now what? – You probably heard of WannyCry ransomware that literally made cry 230,000 computers over 150 countries, this crypto-worm infects computers and propagates through intranet or even the internet, it crypts all your data Continue reading "Is it really important to acknowledge computer security?"
