The way to safeguard our personal and financial data

In today’s world, people are largely dependent on computers and internet. Most of them are relying on online database to save and manage their personal information and also doing online financial transaction to make their life easier. However, information that transmitted over the internet has higher security risk as compared to internal networks. As the criminal become smarter and become more advanced day after day, therefore identity thefts are increasing with various techniques to steal identity from targets. In year 2003, there are 9.9 million people were victims of identity theft. Hence, in order to protect our personal and financial data, there are some tips for you to safeguard your data for being stolen.

Some of the tips to safeguard our privacy data

1. Install and update anti-virus program and use a firewall. In order to protect our computer from being attack by viruses and Trojan horses which may steal and modify the data in our computer, we should use an anti-virus program such as Karpersky, Avira AntiVir, Norton and etc. However, a firewall is a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. It considered as the first line of defense in protecting private information. We must keep our anti-virus program up to date for well protection.

2. Use anti-spyware and regularly scan computer for spyware. Anti-spyware is designed to prevent and detect unwanted and harmful spyware program and romove them from computer once detected. There are some anti-spyware softwares available including Sunbelt Software, TrendMicro and etc.

3. Use a strong password for sensitive files. The passwords which are related to any of our personal information such as date of birth, contact number, identity card number and etc is not encourage using as the password number. A strong password is more than 12 words and it consists of digit (0-9), alphabetic (a-z) and also some special character (@, ^, *, -, _, #).

4. Limit physical access. We should store our sensitive and confidential information in a physically secured device and allow only authorized users access and monitor to it.

5. Restrict network or shared access. We must not allow anyone access to confidential data unless needed. As we limit the authority to access to the confidential data, it also reduces the risk of both accidental and malicious exposure.

6. Encrypt stored sensitive and confidential data. All sensitive and confidential must be encrypted. Data can be protected by encrypting the entire storage drive or a portion selected by us, such as folder or individual files.

source from:

1.http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/103893/Six-Ways-to-Safeguard-Your-Online-Assets

2.http://www.msisac.org/awareness/news/2007-03.cfm