Since this month has been declared National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we here at SourceFed want to give you a quick run down of what the status is for cyber security in the US. A recent study done by National Cyber Security Alliance and security firm McAfee, researchers found that over the past year, 1 in 4 consumers in the United States have had their personal information lost or stolen due to security breaches. 25% of consumers? That is insane!
Many companies have been notifying their costumers that either their passwords or credit card numbers have been subject to data breach. Companies such as LinkedIn, Last.FM, eHarmony and Dropbox have come forward to notify their costumers of the breach in security.
Back in June 2012, eHarmony reported that a small percentage of their users had their accounts hacked. What was later uncovered was that the breach was a Russian hacker who stole 1.5 million eHarmony account passwords and 6.5 million LinkedIn account passwords! Dear Lord!
The study goes on to discuss that 90% of users do not feel that they are safe from malware, viruses and hackers on the Internet. Consumers stated that they felt much safer on their smartphones rather than their laptops or desktops. Unfortunately, most people do not download a malware/virus protection app for their smartphones, leaving them open to hackers and other dangers.
So for this month, maybe try renewing that virus software that keeps notifying you every five seconds, or backing up your music to iTunes so that Apple won’t have to keep messaging you. We all ignore these updates, they can get so annoying, but this month lets heed the warnings from the government and renew those subscriptions and change those passwords TOGETHER!
Question:
How often do you guys use the same password? Don’t be shy, we all do it.
