The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

Internet is an incredible invention that has been widely used by many large companies and small businesses. Although internet has brought convenience to the users, it has also brought with a whole mass of problems. In this case, how safe would our data be when we expose our personal information to the internet?

As we know there are tremendous of security risks on the internet. The most common online threats and attacks are as follow:

Online Fraud
It is strictly where a computer system is instrumental to the crime. Data theft and identity theft are the issues comprise in online fraud.

-Data theft
Data theft is an “invisible” or “faceless” crime, posing a real threat to businesses. The risks to your business can include, a salesperson quits but takes your customer database with them, and an employee sells private data to criminals or even hacked into your database systems to perform activities that benefiting them. Several types of data theft are thumbsucking, bluesnarfing and data spill.

-Identity theft
Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personally identifying information such as your name, social security number, or credit card number, without your permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. Examples of the fraud that involves are credit card fraud, phone or utilities fraud, bank or finance fraud, government documents fraud and etc. Skilled identity thieves may use a variety of methods to get hold of your information. It may include dumpster diving, skimming, phishing, changing your address, old-fashioned stealing and pretexting.

Hack Threat
It can be refer to the illegal and unauthorized hack attempts to a system or network with nasty intention to compromise a defenseless system. Examples for hack threat are illegal part scanning and exploratory actions.

Malicious Code
It is any code added, changed, or removed from a software system in order to cause intentionally harm or threaten the intended function of the system. Viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, and attack scripts are the traditional malicious code whereas Java attack applets and dangerous ActiveX controls are the modern examples for malicious code.

Intrusion
It is the unauthorized access or illegal access to a system or network successfully. It could be web defacement or installations of malicious programs.

Denial of Service (DOS)
It is the illegal act to bring a particular system down or to damage a system in order to disabled at least one of the services provided by the systems. Common forms of DOS attacks are Buffer Overflow Attacks, SYN Attack, Teardrop Attack and Smurf Attack.

Spam
Spam flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Basically there are two types of spam; that is Usenet spam and Email spam.

Due to the expansion of internet, electronic commerce information is no longer secured. Numerous of security risks on the internet may lead users to serious financial loss, information thefts and the attack on your computer. Companies should look into this matter seriously (threats of online security) as in it is the major factor contributing to failures in customer service by most of the B2B companies.

Companies and customers should recognize those online threats and attack in order to safe guard their data. Companies must ensure that the information security is up to the standards and consists of the basic core principles of information security such as confidentiality, integrity and availability.

References:

• http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid92_gci213591,00.html
• http://www.bsagovernment.com/downloads/MajorOnlineThreats.pdf
• http://ezinearticles.com/?Internet-Security-Threats&id=1231360
• http://www.wikipedia.com.my/

Prepared by: HO PECK KEE