Afraid someone may steal your financial secrets or even your identity? Here are some practices that should keep you reasonably safe.
While hackers are employed by organizations for 'penetration testing' - attempting to gain access into the organization's networks and computer systems to find and fix faults in the security system - mainstream usage of the term refers to computer criminals who gain unauthorized (and often illegal) access to computer systems and networks. The 'penetration tester' is commonly referred to as an ethical hacker or a white hat hacker, and is employed by companies and even governments and educational institutions to secure information on the Internet.
While ethical hacking might give you a more peaceful sleep at night, its criminal cousin sure could give you the opposite. Illegal hackers (also known as black hat hackers, crackers, or dark side hackers) have caused major Internet security issues in governments and other high-security agencies with access to sensitive information, besides affecting numerous unsuspecting individual Internet users.
Hacking attacks vary greatly in intensity - they may be slightly irritating, or can threaten the finances or even the identity of people. The latter, known as identity thefts, have become increasingly common over the last few years. At its worst, hacking can cause a serious threat to the security of people and even whole countries.
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It may be hard to altogether prevent hacking attacks, but there are simple procedures that when followed, can minimize the risk of such attacks being successful. Here's a list of practices that should keep you reasonably safe:
- Install firewalls, anti-spyware and other anti-virus programmes on your computer and check regularly for updates.
- Ensure that all your software, especially your operating system and web browser, is updated.
- Stay away from high-risk websites, and do not click on any links found there.
- Create passwords that are a mix of numbers and special characters. Avoid using familiar references, such as a spouse's or child's name, as such passwords are easy to guess. On a related note, choose security questions that are equally hard to guess.
- Never share your password with anyone, no matter how close they may be to you. Also, do not write down your password anywhere.
- Ignore 'phishing e-mails' prompting you to reveal your password or any other such sensitive information, no matter what reason is quoted.
- Do not open any e-mail attachments from unknown senders. In fact, it is advisable to run an anti-virus scan on attachments even from a known sender, just to be safe.
- Be cynical about online advertisements and promotions that promise you money or other incentives that appear too good to be true - more often than not, that is exatly what they are. Most of these sites will have viruses, spyware or other malicious software programs that get installed on your computer and make it susceptible to hacking.
- Disable unnecessary features when installing software. Unnecessary features are less likely to be updated regularly, leading to a security threat.
- Stay updated on network security practices - read up on the various magazines, books and sites offering information on the topic.