Technology is undergoing advancements every single day. There are new ideas and solutions to problems to make our lives even easier. We’ve come a really long way, from IBM introducing the first smartphone in 1992 to Google working on self-driving cars in 2017. In today’s world, nearly everything is possible with a device and internet connection.
While technology has made improvements, this brainpower has also evolved to be used in unethical ways, since the internet is such a vast, even infinite, space. Anything that goes onto the web never really disappears, even if it’s deleted. The more people getting online, the higher the probability of things going wrong, meaning that a lot of information, though seemingly protected, is only a few steps from falling into the wrong hands.
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Though it’s almost over, this is a chance to point out that while popularly visited websites should tighten their security measures, we ourselves, as users, must take our own safety seriously and watch what we post on information seeking webpages. National Cyber Security Awareness Month is an annual campaign designed to engage and educate citizens through events and initiatives to emphasize the importance of being safe online.
To celebrate on campus, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and the Department of Computer Science at NC State co-sponsored a program called “Protect the Pack: Turn on 2FA” throughout October 2017 to inform students of the threats of phishing attacks and security procedures to protect themselves.
These two-factor authentications and verification solutions make it extremely difficult for a hacker to break into an account. Around 98 percent of all phishing attacks, like email attempts to coax you into disclosing your personal details, can be prevented with such processes. This year is the 14th annual CSAM event.
Hacking to access unauthorized information is the largest threat posed by weak cybersafety measures. If details like email addresses and passwords are obtained by the wrong people, the consequences can be severe. Viruses can be sent to email addresses through link attachments which can irreversibly corrupt a device, resulting in a loss of valuable information. Spam and, in some malicious cases, threats can be sent to recipients.
Services which need information like monetary account credentials should use strong and unbreakable code for their software. It’s also a good idea and an effective precaution for users to back up their data in the event that it’s somehow damaged.
The Wolfpack Security and Private Research (WSPR) Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at NC State models and builds technology that protects users, systems and networks from malicious and privacy-infringing acts. The faculty members and the affiliated students work on areas of computer security like finding flaws in existing operating systems and detecting malicious activity in the mechanisms.
Social media is one of the largest and easiest ways in which personal information is revealed. Your public profile is open to the world, and as such, it’s safer to keep the audience of your posts limited to the people you add as friends — specifically, people you personally know and trust.
Fake accounts can be and are used with unpleasant motives to track someone down using the location feature. According to CNN, 83 million Facebook accounts are fakes and duplicates, and the latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that there have been 1,120 data breaches this year through Oct. 25.
Cyberbullying is also a major consequence of not taking online safety seriously enough. Over 25 percent of adolescents have been bullied through their cellphones or over the internet. There is nothing stopping a bully from creating a fake account on social media and using it to emotionally torment someone behind a screen. This can cause an individual to be constantly upset and quiet, decline in academic performance and even consider suicidal thoughts. If fake accounts were better detected by security software systems, cyberbullying would not be one of the many dangers to a person’s mental health.
Strict security over the internet is a must. If you see anything online that looks even a bit sketchy, it would be wise to think about yourself (and your phone or computer) and refrain from going where that link is taking you. It can all start from the simplest of measures — like not using the same password you used in sixth grade for all of your current internet accounts.
If you observe discrepancies in your NC State accounts, the Office of Information Technology Walk-In Center provides students with services like one-on-one support for software, hardware, network connectivity and Unity account issues.
