USSPI executive director David Gewirtz says, “Homeland security begins at home.” There are bad guys out there and they’re as close to you as your network port. Read the articles below to learn how you can keep yourself and your family safe.
Beyond physical security is the growing issue of cyber-security. Don’t think that cyber-security concerns are simply a question of whether a few laptops get hacked. In fact, the digital threat vector represents issues impacting communications confidentiality, identity theft, emergency response, organized crime, and even (perhaps especially) espionage.
Click here to read the full report. [requires Flash to be installed in your browser]
If you’re not much of a computer user, you might not be familiar with the term USB. It stands, in geek-speak, for Universal Serial Bus — and it’s the “universal” part of its name that can cause no end of security headaches. Most people just don’t understand how the USB port on most computers can open a back door into any secure facility.
[This article is not online]
When it comes to protecting their identities, consumers are being threatened and pressured from all sides. It’s not just scam artists who are doing everything they can to separate you from your birth date and social security number, it’s often the online Web sites you choose to use and — most troubling — those in authority as well.
Every topic needs its own day or month, and I guess cybersecurity is no exception. This October is the sixth annual Cybersecurity Awareness Month sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. And while it may seem silly for cybersecurity awareness to need its own month, there’s nothing silly about keeping your computer secure.
Many of us think of social networks — if we think of them at all — as those “computer things” our kids use to plan parties and gossip amongst their friends. But, used correctly (and with careful consideration of any legal restrictions), social networks can come close to giving us a look inside the very souls of potential crooks and terrorists.
President Roosevelt may have had to contend with Hitler and Stalin, not to mention an occasionally naked Churchill (look it up), but at least he didn’t have to deal with the blogosphere. President Obama has no such luck. He’s the second President who not only has a fourth estate, but a completely unruly and often full-goose-bozo body of bloggers, just looking for any excuse to increase their “hits” and drive up the pennies they’re given for their thoughts from Google’s ad revenue service.
It’s not what you know, or who you know. It’s who knows you. And that’s pretty much where the trouble starts.
A few months ago, I posted a blog on this site about how to protect yourself from counterfeit check scams. I get security alerts from the FDIC about these check scams. The reason I posted that article was because I got seven alerts in one day, an all-time record. Today, that record was broken. I got alerts about 11 counterfeit check scams, all over the country. Here are some key ways to protect yourself.
Zombies. I hate zombies. I particularly hate it when wave after wave of zombies come at you, eating brains and dripping flesh. And yet they came – zombies…everyday computers, brains hijacked by outsiders and linked together to form an army on the attack – they came in droves.
It used to be spying was hands-on. To turn someone into an Aldrich Ames, you had to tempt them with money or revenge or ideology, promise them sex or catch them at it. Today’s spies are less like a real-life James Bond and more like Lewis Skolnick from “Revenge of the Nerds”.
DAVID GEWIRTZ is a CNN contributor and editor-in-chief of the ZATZ magazines. He is a recipient of the Sigma Xi Research Award in Engineering and was a candidate for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Letters. David serves as USSPI's executive director.
