Financial Attacks
Data from the year 2008 showed that the high point of action from viruses, worms and other internet based attacks came three days before America’s Thanksgiving holiday, leading them to suggest that the same day could prove bleakest for 24 hours this year.
The increase in virus activity could be the result of internet shopping in the run-up for Christmas, as millions of users begin going online to purchase gifts for their friends and relatives.
This is a chance for criminals to access financial details. A number of people are using the web for online shopping for Christmas with internet sales getting in-numerous. There was an increase of fifteen percent since 2008.
More people are expected to use the web for their shopping as a way to find lower prices and help them to beat the credit punch.
Security experts are expecting a traditional increase of malware over November and December, they have warned of another source of potential attacks. Spammers and criminals have attempted to use the popularity of American president-elect Barack Obama as a way to trick users into downloading malware.
There have been a flood of emails purporting a link to a video of Obama’s speech in which were connected to a Trojan horse program which would compromise the target’s PC. Meanwhile, a separate burst of spam messages contained a file called Barack Obama.exe, which when activated, places a root kit on the victim’s machine and opens it up to hackers around the world.
The FBI reports that nine out of ten organizations in the country are victims of some sort of security incident, and one-fifth are hit more than twenty times a year. Almost two-thirds suffer financial loss as a result of the cyber incidents.
In order to deter financial threats, verification of information is necessary. This is an area where both customers and businesses must be careful.
For the businesses, the business needs to gather information from the customer and then has a duty to protect that information. There can be situations where too much verification is required, such as what is the address for mailing a payment, etc. The business needs to determine what information it needs and when to ask for it. It’s a tough balance between ease of service and maintaining information security but making customer service difficult.
For the customer, they need to make sure that they have not posted that information elsewhere. This means that quite often people will publish blogs that might have a family history. Instantly, I may now know your maternal grandfather’s name to answer the security question at the bank. This concept extends to family pets, children, other items that are personally identifiable and are available publicly.
