Within this digital era, burglars stand less chance of getting a great fortune by stealing your purse, who carries cash nowadays? As the whole world is turning to technology, even these burglars had to think of new ways to steal someone else’s money. John Downer is the security lead at payment company Braintree, which provides online payments. Downey states that online fraud has been increasing tremendously in the last couple of years. The main reason is that the people that want to steal from you have also changed their business model into the technology sector; an online cyber-attack. (Hickey 2017) Focusing on a secure network within your payments is the most important factor for individuals; however, businesses should adopt safeguards (Hickey 2017) and should aim at updating your software on regular basis (Hickey 2017).
An example of a successful hack this month was the cyber-attack on the credit check firm Equifax. Equifax has been struck by two cyber-attacks, four months ago, the other this month. After the first attack the security company Mandiant could not identify what data was stolen. However, Bloomberg has announced that these hackers now have access to names, dates of births, email addresses and telephone numbers of UK consumers in the breach. Equifax has come under fire in the wake of the attack for its failure to support customers and its lack of transparency. As this cyber-attack could result in all these customers getting robbed of their online bank account. (McGoogan 2017)
But, what if it’s your information that gets hacked? In May next year the law Data Protection Act will be replaced by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. The changed law will include tighter rules on when a company must admit to a breach and tougher penalties. The most important part of the act is that customers will have to be told their company has been hacked within 72 hours. Even though this does not reconcile that their company was not safeguarded enough, but it gives the companies another incentive to secure their data. Companies will receive a fine, if they have such a weak system it can be hacked.
So where can you start whit being safe for these cyber attacks? Well, you can start by setting up a number of email addresses to handle communication for different accounts such as banking, online shopping and utility bills. (Murray 2017)
References:
Hickey, S. (2017). Fighting cybercrime: how to tackle the hackers. online. the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/braintree-payments/2017/aug/08/fighting-cybercrime-how-to-tackle-the-hackers. Accessed 25 Sep. 2017.
Hickey, S. (2017). Cyber-attacks: we need to talk about fraud. online. the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/braintree-payments/2017/aug/17/cyber-attacks-we-need-to-talk-about-fraud. Accessed 25 Sep. 2017.
Murray, A. (2017). Equifax data breach: how can I get firms to delete all they know about me?. Online. The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/equifax-data-breach-can-get-firms-delete-know . Accessed 25 Sep. 2017.
McGoogan, C. (2017). Equifax: Hackers hit company five months before stealing 143 million customerdetails. online. The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/09/19/equifax-hackers-hit-company-five-months-stealing-143-million/ . Accessed 25 Sep. 2017.
Dear Georgina, in addition to the dangers described in your blog I want to stress the danger of coming AI cyber-attacks. This is because recently, during the Black Hat cybersecurity conference, 62 industry professionals said AI will be able to perform its first cyberattack in the next 12 months (Leary, 2017).
Although AI offers many benefits, its adoption and implementation can result in effective and dangerous cyber- attacks. These attacks are very similar to the existing cyberattacks in your blog but are often more powerful and efficient. First, they are able to perform the attacks faster and second their reaction is faster when they encounter resistance. For example, if cybersecurity experts fix weaknesses they quickly exploit other vulnerabilities and new ways to enter the system without human interactions. Moreover, since AI is operating autonomously the chances that it is attacking a system that should not been attacked are high which usually results in unexpected damages. (Straub, 2017)
This development is already recognized by companies like Google and IBM who have taken steps to strengthen their cyber security. Google has for example created an ‘AI Fight Club’ that will train systems to more effectively encounter harmful AI. IBM on the other hand has developed a new IBM Z Mainframe system that can run more than 12 billion encrypted transactions per day to prevent the theft of financial data. (Leary, 2017)
More about this topic can be found in the following sources:
– Learly, K. (2017 August 31). Experts Warn That AI-Enhanced Cyberattacks Are An Imminent Threat. Retrieved from https://futurism.com/experts-warn-that-ai-enhanced-cyberattacks-are-an-imminent-threat/
– Straub, J. (2017, August 28) Artificial intelligence cyber attacks are coming – but what does that mean? Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-cyber-attacks-are-coming-but-what-does-that-mean-82035