Cyber Crime for Christmas & New Year

UK Fraud victims will lose an estimated £1.3 billion this Christmas

David Parish – Information Security Consultant

Identifiable Information, (PII) passwords are one of the key preventative measures against a data incident.

Cyber crime is increasing and has become a multibillion-pound industry. Cyber attacks come in various forms and are designed to not only target technological weaknesses but also exploit people and a lack of organisational processes and procedures in businesses.

The festive period is an ideal time for cyber criminals to strike, and according to the Barclays DigiSafe Christmas Survey, fraud victims will lose an estimated £1.3 billion this Christmas.

One way to quickly and fairly easily reduce the likelihood of a successful attack and also a potential data breach at home or at work is :-

PASSWORDS at Home and Work 9am – 5pm and 5pm -9am

If you have a poor password at work, you will probably have a poor password at home making you and your family vulnerable.

GDPR and ISO 27001 are very specific in protecting Personal Identifiable Information, (PII) passwords are one of the key preventative measures against a data incident.

UK National Cyber Security Centre ( NCSC ) guidance on personal passwords.

For home and business users create passwords using three random words. ‘coffeetrainfish’ or ‘walltinshirt’” or as its Christmas, the title of your favourite song in a string. “rudolph red nose reindeer “ your password could look like this “rudredrei” to really strengthen add Capital and symbols and numbers creating a very strong password. Ru4rede1%.

So we now have a strong password what do we need to do next

E Mails: Links in emails, social media posts and text messages are often how cybercriminals try to steal your information or infect your devices . Numerous data breaches and cyber attacks have occurred utilising this method of attack.

Web Look out for https URL and the padlock symbol.

Data Security

If you collect it, protect it. Follow reasonable security measures to ensure that customers’ and employees’ personal information is protected from inappropriate and unauthorised access.

Understand your Data Know what you are protecting. Be aware of all the personal information you have, where you are storing it, how you are using it and who has access to it. Understand the kind of assets you have and why a hacker might pursue them.

Don’t collect what you don’t need. …

Protect against mobile device risks. Smartphones, tablets and laptops can add to employee flexibility and productivity, but they can also be repositories of sensitive information, which, if lost, can harm your customers and your business.

“If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

by David Parish, Information Security Consultant – IBITGQ Certified ISO 27001 and GDPR implementation Specialist MSC Security and Risk Management