Security: The User Matters

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve made any posts and with the happenings of the past week I thought it was a good time to jump back in! For those that don’t know this last week we saw widespread email account compromises across a number of different webmail platforms. While we’ve all heard a story in the past where an email account was compromised and some crucial data, or strategy was leaked this last instance was different.

This past week over 30,000 email accounts were compromised (access was gained by an unwanted individual or entity) as reported by

RTE,ZDNet,TechSpot,Mashable

What all of these reports agree upon – and the sources they site – the issue is not the security of the platform or product but that people are. But it’s not that these individuals are intentionally going out there and giving out their account details but they are getting themselves into situations where their information is gathered without their knowledge. This is where the user comes in. This is traditionally the hardest area to improve upon as it requires change of behavior for individuals with no over-sight or supervision. You must WANT to improve, protect yourself, be more security conscious or no amount of security products will fully protect you.

So what I recommend to those of you reading this and saying “yikes I hope that doesn’t happen to me” is to review your basic computer practices:

Passwords, do you use them? How do you make them, do you change them often and regularly?
When you visit websites, do you look at the address bar to see where you really are?
If you’re putting personal data in are you making sure the website is secure?
When you save data on your computer are you doing so within your own profile in a designated area?
Do you have open shares on your computer to anyone who can access?
Do you have wifi, is it secure?
Do you browse the web in public places like coffee shops, restaurants, airports, and sporting events?

Things like this should come to mind whenever you’re working with personal information. It’s scary how easily open information can be gathered. But little steps can go a long way to protecting you from these widespread attacks that just look for the easy catch.

As always, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions let us know! There are a ton of resources out there with steps for protecting yourself in each of the different situations I made note of but I’d be happy to talk with you about any concerns you may have.