Cybersecurity news from NTSC
Keep these numbers in mind before entering personal information on a website or responding to an email that requests financial information. The more you disclose, the greater your chance of becoming a victim of identity theft. Over one million people in the United States were impacted by identity theft last year.
Surprise: People in their 30s were victims more often than any other age group. On average, it takes six months and 200 hours of work to recover.
Here are the kinds of personal information that are most valuable to criminals.
Beginning in January, Google will change the way it tracks users’ online behavior. Instead of collecting troves of users’ personal information using “cookies,” Google will collect information about the websites accessed by each computer and smartphone without identifying its owner. Users will have greater control over the types of personal data collected, and advertisers won’t be provided with information identifying the behavior of specific individuals.
IBM’s latest research shows why it's important for employees to be aware and engaged in cybersecurity. The cost of a cyber breach now averages $9.5 million in the U.S. and nearly $5 million across Canada and Europe. Cybercrooks’ schemes are so sophisticated that it takes 204 days, on average, for an organization to discover the crime.
A new AI - powered music app called Mubert has created over 100 million tunes — roughly the size of Spotify’s entire music catalog. Customers enter a description of the new song they want and, in a few seconds, are presented with a fully licensed tune. Here’s a tune Mubert generated when we entered the description “fast-paced, upbeat melody, 150 beats per minute, 45 seconds long.” (You'll hear clicks during the music because the track hasn't been purchased for use outside of this newsletter.)
Understand cybersecurity terms,
and you’ll be on your way to avoiding cybercrime.
We’ve put together a handy list of cybersecurity definitions
that you can download, print, and share.
Juice jacking. Money mule. Smishing. AI. Keyloggers.
“Is my smartphone listening to me and sending everything I say back to Samsung?”
Your phone is listening for you to say “Alexa” or “Siri” to answer your questions, but it does not record and send conversations to advertisers. That would require unlimited processing power, storage and violate wiretapping laws. But, as LifeHacker says, your phone tracks where you are, what you search for, the websites you visit, and what you buy online. As a result, the amount of personal information advertisers know about you is “mind-numbing,” with the power of artificial intelligence, that knowledge will become far more detailed. If the collection of your personal information bothers you, turn off your phone’s voice assistant and use a VPN to surf the web on your personal devices.
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“Will artificial intelligence wipe out cybercrime, or will it make things worse?”
Think of it as a race. As cybercrooks and hostile governments are using AI to up their game, cybersecurity professions here are upping theirs. Apple, for example, has started sending iPhone users small security updates to address newly discovered dangers. Poor language translation has always tipped off users that an email is fake, but hackers are now using AI to create phishing emails without spelling and grammar errors.
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“If I notice a suspicious post or message from a friend on Facebook, what should I do?”
If there’s a link in that suspicious message, don’t click on it. Alert your friend by text or email that their account may have been hacked. Then, alert Facebook by clicking on the three dots next to the suspicious post and clicking “Report Post.”
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