Cyber Secuirty

Cybercrime is one of the most significant criminal threats to the UK. Last year alone there have been over 2.5 million internet related crimes within the UK. However what is slightly more concerning is that 80% of cybercrime could be prevented!

Did you know?
Each day over 100,000 new pieces of malware are created.
Your right to reclaim stolen monies is significantly reduced if not totally withdrawn if you transfer money through a scam or unknowingly give hackers your personal and bank details.
Under UK Law only phone and internet companies are legally obliged to inform customers of data breaches.

Email Addresses
In general we don’t see our email addresses as valuable, however when you stop and think, your email address is more than likely the same for each various site it allows you access to. No doubt your password for each of these sites is probably similar too. Hackers rely on this! It’s an incredibly simple way for a hacker to steal your data through a phishing scam, hackers send out spam emails to your email address, you open the email and out of curiosity click on the link, by this point you have probably already accepted malware on to your device and handed over some of your details, you then probably realise it’s a scam close the email and forget all about it!

Passwords
90% of you will probably have had the same password for the last ten years, which you tweak slightly to fit the criteria of different websites; add a couple of numbers on one end add some capital letters somewhere but ultimately your password will stay the same. It probably also quite an obvious combination, may be you use your mother’s maiden name and your date of birth or even better just ‘Password’ because it’s easy to remember. Now that you have just very kindly given the hackers some of the data on your device by opening their spam email you have now given more than enough information to work out your password!

Software Updates
You have had a manic day at work your get home, sort all your jobs out sit down with the laptop to have a quick mooch on the internet then comes the update notifications, Apple update, Adobe update etc etc. You then have the option to update now and restart your device or to remind you in an hour, you obviously go for update in an hour because you only need to just look at something quickly and it will take forever to install and reboot, you put your devices away and forget about the update, you probably repeat this every day for about a week before you finally give in and install the update. By not updating you have put your device and data at risk because the new software updates are there to tell the software how to prevent those nasties getting to your information!

Antivirus
We seem to forget about the importance of antivirus. It’s an added expense and we think that we don’t need it that much, you only really use your laptop for a bit of shopping and the kids homework! Antivirus is actually a really important factor in keeping you safe. It’s kind of like getting an alarm for your house or car, antivirus works in much the same way, having it on your computer fights off the general day to day nasties and if anything serious happens you are alerted straight away. It’s a much better option than waiting until someone has hacked your device and stolen your data or even accessed your accounts and then having the hassle trying to claim it all back!

By addressing the four above issues you can make sure your data is much safer and reduce the potential risk of cybercrime to yourself. The government have noticed what a huge impact cybercrime has had and the cost to the public and has teamed up with the National Cyber Crime Unit to launch www.cyberstreetwise.com this is a website where you can find more information about how to keep your personal data secure and how to try and avoid the Cybercrime tricks.

There is still a huge concern out there regarding our data with the recent data hacks of a number of large companies. Over the past few months companies such as Talk Talk, Ashley Madison, Carphone Warehouse and EBay. Click the link below to look back over the last 10 years of hacking attacks.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data…

It’s important to remember no matter what technical precautions you put in place ultimately it is ourselves that are the last line of defence in IT security. It’s down to you, what you click on, what you open and what information you give away!