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Why Your Data is Never Safe (Or, what a totaled car teaches us about Internet Fraud!)

Posted By Pete at 12:33 AM, February 13, 2009

mycar_r.png
I was in a car accident a couple of weeks ago. Something I never thought I'd get into. I consider myself a good driver, always (most of the time anyways) following rules and traffic signs, alert, aware of my surroundings, what other cars around me are doing. However, I was still rear ended on the freeway, while I was at a complete stop. Apparently, the driver who hit me was not paying attention to the traffic in front of him, so he hit me and pushed my car into two other cars. The damage: my lovely car was totaled. Luckily, I managed to walk away from that with only a few aches and pains. The moral of the story? No matter how careful you are, you can't control how others around you drive. All you can do is drive the safest car you can afford and drive it safely.

So what does this have to do with your data? I came across THIS article a few weeks back and let out a long sigh of helplessness. One little keylogger and millions of credit card numbers are potentially compromised. So you've installed security software on your PC. You have a VPN firewall. You have a gateway security solution. You've deployed URL filtering, anti-spam, IPS, applied security patches...the works. You've taken all the steps necessary to secure your network. And yet your credit card numbers still end up in the wrong hands. No matter how careful you are, you have no control over where your data goes after it leaves your network. You have no idea what payment processing firms and other organizations handling our sensitive data have in place for network security. In the end, all you can do is deploy the best security you can afford and hope that others follow suit. Sound familiar?

Posted by: Pete at 12:33 AM
Categories: Malware , Phishing , Spyware

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