Cyber Terrorism | Are you next?

In today’s world, nothing is certain. We are nothing more than a mere breath in the wind, here today and then gone tomorrow. Yet we work so hard to improve the future us. Often we become consumed with work or with our hobbies and end up creating a cycle, a cadence or rhythm persay. Yes, there are variations to those cycles, but when it really comes down to it, we are all very similar in nature…concerned with today, the here and now, just to worry about tomorrow and when tomorrow comes, to do the same.

Yes, I know that this is a little far fetch for the topic at hand, but when you think about it, not really. Every day we are faced with the potential of having our cyber lives broken into. For example, when it comes to our lives on social media, Heimdal Security notes that roughly 600,000 Facebook accounts are compromised everyday. “Online computer hackers have infiltrated and exposed the personal information of 110 million Americans – nearly half of the US adult population – over the last year alone” (rt.com). If that’s not jarring to you, take a look at NORSE Corp’s live feed of cyber attacks happening all around the globe. As I said before, nothing is certain in this life and you never know when you might get hacked. Maybe even while you are reading this blog…knock on wood (If you believe in that kind of thing). Hey, it could happen. Watch this one minute video about the above.

So how do we go about protecting ourselves? Well, here are some tips taken directly from the Department of Homeland Security’s website:

• Never click on links in emails.
• Never open the attachments.
• Do not give out personal information.
• Set secure passwords and don’t share them with anyone.
• Keep your operating system, browser, anti-virus and other critical software up to date.
• Verify the authenticity of requests from companies or individuals by contacting them directly.
• Pay close attention to website URLs.
• For e-Mail, turn off the option to automatically download attachments.
• Be suspicious of unknown links or requests sent through email or text message.

If you want to read more about each of these and their expanded descriptions, visit DHS’s site by clicking here…

Oh man, I hope that you guy’s are not mad that I just took you to a bogie site… Well not bogie in the sense that it was fraudulent, but that it was not the real link I was saying. I hope you learned something from that site and even just now. I mean, you trusted me and clicked on the link I provided. It was that easy. Not that I wanted to do anything malicious, but instead, help you see how easy it is and how trusting we are of even people we have no affiliation with, online. Here is the real link, I promise. DHS.

Side tangent, here is a screenshot of me clicking on the Norse Attack Map having left it open for a while. It’s loading everything I missed while I was away and it was open.

We need to be careful of the things mentioned above and to take action as individuals in protecting ourselves and being aware of what is going on within the cyber community. We need to be active within our cyber lives and monitor the activity in which we partake so that we may recognize any irregularities. Change your passwords often and don’t make the simple mistake of putting them on sticky notes. That would bring us into the topic of social engineering which is a whole other blog within its self.