Cybercrime is one of the most lucrative illegal businesses of our time, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Over the last decade, cybercriminals have developed new and increasingly sophisticated ways of capitalizing on the explo­sion of Internet users, and they face little danger of being caught. Meanwhile, consumers are con­fronted with greater risks to their money and information each year.

The proliferation of mobile devices has provided a new opportunity for cybercriminals. With mobile shipments now outpacing PC shipments, there is now a large enough pool for the cybercriminals to start to leverage this base to make money.

Here are 5 quick tips to help you protect your mobile device and your data on the device.

Put a PIN on it – As a first basic step make sure you use a PIN code or password to lock your device and make sure it is set to auto-lock after a period of time.

Think before you click: Being on the go is convenient, but in our rush to respond, we don’t always take the time to look carefully at texts, email and social posts to make sure they are valid. Always be careful when clicking on links that you receive from anyone.

Don’t be app happy: Be careful what apps you download and where you download them from. Most malicious software for mobile devices is distributed through “bad” apps.

Be careful where you search: Double-check a website’s address and make sure that it appears legitimate by reviewing the URL or rather than doing a search for a site, type in the correct address in the URL bar to avoid running into any phony sites.

Secure your device:  Make sure all your mobile devices have comprehensive security software, likeMcAfee Mobile Security or McAfee LiveSafe (for all your devices) that protects you from threats, helps you avoid risky websites and malicious apps, and in the event of loss or theft, lets you remotely backup, lock and if necessary, wipe all the data from your mobile device.

 

Robert Siciliano is an Online Security Expert to McAfee. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Mobile was Hacked!  (Disclosures)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Many of you as parents may think, “not much” when asked this question. But in reality, it’s probably a lot more than you think. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that McAfee’s 2013 study, Digital Deception: Exploring the Online Disconnect between Parents and Kids, which examines the online habits and interests of tweens, teens, and young adults, finds there is a significant disconnect between what they do online and what their parents believe they do.

The phrase “liar liar, pants on fire” comes to mind when I hear this topic and the phrase applies to both parents and kids. Parents are lying to themselves if they think they know what their kids are doing online, since 80% said they would not know how to find out what their kids are doing online and 62% do not think that their kids can get into deep trouble online. As for our kids, let’s face it – kids sometimes lie. The study found that 69% of kids say that they know how to hide what they do online from their parents and disturbingly 44% of them cleared their browser history or used private browsing sessions to hide their activity from their parents.

While youth understand the Internet is dangerous, they still engage in risky (and sometimes illegal) behavior. Not only are they hiding this activity from their parents in a variety of ways, but almost half (46%) admit that they would change their behavior if they knew their parents were paying attention.

86% of youth believe that social sites are safe and are aware that sharing personal details online carry risk, yet kids admit to posting personal information such as their email addresses (50%) and phone numbers (32%)

48% have viewed content they know their parents would disapprove of

29% of teens and college aged youth have accessed pirated music or movies online

Adding to this problem is how clueless parents are regarding technology and their kids’ online lives. 54% of kids say their parents don’t have time to check up on the kids’ online behavior and 42% say their parents don’t care what the kids do online. And even worse, only 17% of parents believe that the online world is as dangerous as the offline world and almost 74% of parents just admit defeat and claim that they do not have the time or energy to keep up with their kids and simply hope for the best.

So how do you bridge this divide?
Parents, you must stay in-the-know. Since your kids have grown up in an online world, they may be more online savvy than you, but giving up isn’t an option. You must challenge yourselves to become familiar with the complexities of the online universe and stay educated on the various devices your kids are using to go online.

Here are some things you can do as parents to get more tech savvy:

Get device savvy: Whether you’re using a laptop, desktop, Mac, tablet, mobile, wired Internet, wireless, or software, learn it. No excuses. No more, “My kids know more than I do,” or “All I know how to do is push that button-thingy.” Take the time to learn enough about the devices your kids are using.

Get social: One of the best ways to get savvy is to get social. By using your devices to communicate with the people in your life, you inevitably learn the hardware and software. Keep in mind that “getting social” doesn’t entail exposing all your deepest, darkest secrets, or even telling the world you just ate a tuna sandwich, but it is a good way to learn a key method that your kids communicate.

Manage your/their online reputation: Whether you are socially active or not, whether you have a website or not, there are plenty of websites that know who you are, that are either discussing you or listing your information in some fashion. Google yourself and your kids to see what’s being said. Teaching your kids what is and is not appropriate online is a must these days. And as a good rule of thumb, you should teach your kids that things posted online stays there forever.

Get secure: There are more ways to scam people online than ever before. Your security intelligence is constantly being challenged, and your hardware and software are constant targets. Invest in comprehensive security solutions that include antivirus, but also protects your kids, identity and data for ALL your devices like McAfee LiveSafe.

Or you can be like me and tell your kids that once they turn 10 they will be locked in a box in my basement until they turn 30. Just kidding (maybe). But seriously, parents – it’s time to make this a priority, for you and your kids. For more information, click here or follow McAfee on Facebook and on Twitter at @McAfeeConsumer.

Robert Siciliano is an Online Security Expert to McAfee. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Mobile was Hacked!  (Disclosures)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Gold farmers play massive multiplayer online games, not for fun, but to accumulate virtual currency, or “gold,” which can then be sold to other players, despite the fact that most game operators explicitly ban the exchange of in-game currency for cash. Gold farming is so lucrative, people in China and other developing nations can support themselves by working full-time operating gold farming rings.

About.com reports “most gold farmers are from developing countries such as China and Vietnam. According to World Bank estimates, there are currently over 100,000 people working as full-time gamers in China. They toil away for 12 or more hours a day in internet cafes, abandoned warehouses, and small offices, making about 25 cents an hour, or roughly $75 a month. There are quotas in place and work performances are heavily evaluated. The workforce is dominantly made up of migrant teenagers and young adults who come to the cities looking for work. These “virtual sweatshops” resemble the thousands of toy and appliance factories that have opened in China in the past several decades to take advantage of China’s abundance of cheap labor.”

Many leading MMOs are finding it increasingly necessary to deploy a layered defense to protect against gold farming, chargebacks and increasingly, account takeovers within gaming environments.  By leveraging the power of device reputation, which looks at the computer, smart phone or tablet connecting to the games, the gaming publisher can easily connect together players working together and shut down entire rings in one sweep.  In one case, a major gaming publisher saw the marvel of Oregon-based iovation’s fraud protection service and took action against 1,000 fraudulent accounts shortly after implementing the SaaS-based service.

Robert Siciliano, personal security and identity theft expert contributor to iovation. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Mobile was Hacked! See him knock’em dead in this identity theft prevention video. Disclosures.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Banks rely on usernames and passwords as a layer of protection and authentication to prevent criminals from accessing your accounts. However researchers now show that your password—even though it may be a relatively “strong” one, might not be strong enough.

When you create a password and provide it to a website, that site is supposed to then convert them to “hashes” as Ars Technica explains “Instead, they work only with these so-called one-way hashes, which are incapable of being mathematically converted back into the letters, numbers, and symbols originally chosen by the user. In the event of a security breach that exposes the password data, an attacker still must painstakingly guess the plaintext for each hash—for instance, they must guess that “5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99″ is the MD5 hashes for “password”.

But Ars did an experiment with some newbie technologist all the way up to expert hackers to see what they could do to crack the hash.

“The characteristics that made “momof3g8kids” and “Oscar+emmy2″ easy to remember are precisely the things that allowed them to be cracked. Their basic components—”mom,” “kids,” “oscar,” “emmy,” and numbers—are a core part of even basic password-cracking lists. The increasing power of hardware and specialized software makes it trivial for crackers to combine these ingredients in literally billions of slightly different permutations. Unless the user takes great care, passwords that are easy to remember are sitting ducks in the hands of crackers.”

How to get hacked

Dictionary attacks: Avoid consecutive keyboard combinations— such as qwerty or asdfg. Don’t use dictionary words, slang terms, common misspellings, or words spelled backward. These cracks rely on software that automatically plugs common words into password fields. Password cracking becomes almost effortless with a tool like “John the Ripper” or similar programs.

Simple passwords: Don’t use personal information such as your name, age, birth date, child’s name, pet’s name, or favorite color/song, etc. When 32 million passwords were exposed in a breach last year, almost 1% of victims were using “123456.” The next most popular password was “12345.” Other common choices are “111111,” “princess,” “qwerty,” and “abc123.”

Reuse of passwords across multiple sites: Reusing passwords for email, banking, and social media accounts can lead to identity theft. Two recent breaches revealed a password reuse rate of 31% among victims.

Protect yourself:

1. Make sure you use different passwords for each of your accounts.
2. Be sure no one watches when you enter your password.
3. Always log off if you leave your device and anyone is around—it only takes a moment for someone to steal or change the password.
4. Use comprehensive security software and keep it up to date to avoid keyloggers (keystroke loggers) and other malware.
5. Avoid entering passwords on computers you don’t control (like computers at an Internet café or library)—they may have malware that steals your passwords.
6. Avoid entering passwords when using unsecured Wi-Fi connections (like at the airport or coffee shop)—hackers can intercept your passwords and data over this unsecured connection.
7. Don’t tell anyone your password. Your trusted friend now might not be your friend in the future. Keep your passwords safe by keeping them to yourself.
8. Depending on the sensitivity of the information being protected, you should change your passwords periodically, and avoid reusing a password for at least one year.
9. Do use at least eight characters of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols in your password. Remember, the more the merrier.

10. Strong passwords are easy to remember but hard to guess. Iam:)2b29! — This has 10 characters and says “I am happy to be 29!” I wish.

11. Use the keyboard as a palette to create shapes. %tgbHU8*- Follow that on the keyboard. It’s a V. The letter V starting with any of the top keys. To change these periodically, you can slide them across the keyboard. Use W if you are feeling all crazy.

12. Have fun with known short codes or sentences or phrases. 2B-or-Not_2b? —This one says “To be or not to be?”

13. It’s okay to write down your passwords, just keep them away from your computer and mixed in with other numbers and letters so it’s not apparent that it’s a password.

14. You can also write a “tip sheet” which will give you a clue to remember your password, but doesn’t actually contain your password on it. For example, in the example above, your “tip sheet” might read “To be, or not to be?”

15. Check your password strength. If the site you are signing up for offers a password strength analyzer, pay attention to it and heed its advice.

While you must do your part to manage effective passwords, banks are working in the background to add additional layers of security to protect you. For example, financial institutions are incorporating complex device identification, which looks at numerous characteristics of the online transaction including the device you are using to connect. iovation, an Oregon-based security firm, goes a step further offering Device Reputation, which builds on complex device identification with real-time risk assessments. iovation knows the reputations of over 1.3 billion devices in iovation’s device reputation knowledge base. By knowing a devices reputation, banks can better determine whether a particular device is trustworthy before a transaction has been approved.

Robert Siciliano, personal security and identity theft expert contributor to iovation. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Mobile was Hacked! See him knock’em dead in this identity theft prevention video. Disclosures.

Filed Under: iovation

I once listed a property for rent on Craigslist that scammers ended up relisting for a third of my asking price. People would pull into my driveway and knock on my door while the listing was active and even after the listing I posted had expired too.

Business Insider reports, “Since lenders have tightened their requirements for getting a mortgage—which is making it harder to buy a home—the rental market is hot right now. Turns out, so is the online identity theft market, which is why it’s no surprise that identity thieves are attacking people who are looking to rent.”

Here’s how the scam often works. The scammer copies and pastes the ad and poses as the homeowner, who is conveniently away traveling on business overseas. In order to generate traffic, the scammer lists the ad for much less than is being asked. When people respond to the ad, the scammer tells them they can rent it out—all they have to do is forward him the first month’s rent via a money wire overseas. Some people will want to drive by to get a look without actually going in, and that’s enough for them to send the money.

The way I thwarted this crime under my watch was to continually scan Craigslist for keywords related to my ad to see if it was being posted by a scammer. When I discovered a fraudulent post, I emailed abuse@craigslist.com with the link. Craigslist was very responsive and took the posts down. The scammer was equally diligent, however: I had to do this almost 20 times during the period I was renting out the apartment.

How can you protect yourself from scams like this, or other scams that take advantage of online classified ads?

• Use common sense, be smart and pay attention. If you do that, you won’t fall for these types of cons.
• Be very careful who you contact and who contacts you. You never know who the person is or what his or her motivation may be.
• Whenever possible, deal locally. People who cannot meet you in your town are more likely to be scammers. And even when you do meet in person, you still should be wary.
• Never engage in online transactions involving credit cards, cashier’s checks, money orders, personal checks, Western Union, MoneyGram, cash or anything that requires you to send money to a stranger in response to money he or she has sent you. This is known as an advance fee scam.
• Be smart. Don’t disclose your financial information, including account or Social Security number, for any reason. Look out! Scammers will say anything in order to get this information.

Many classified sites stop fraudulent ads from being published in the first place by incorporating device-based intelligence that helps them assess risk upfront. Fraud prevention technology offered by iovation Inc. not only helps these sites identify repeat offenders coming in under multiple fake identities, but also detects when scammers are attempting to place multiple fraudulent ads using a variety of computers, tablets and smartphones to do so. This greatly helps rid these sites of undesirables and protects their valued members.

Robert Siciliano, personal security and identity theft expert contributor to iovation. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Mobile was Hacked! See him knock’em dead in this identity theft prevention video. Disclosures.

Filed Under: iovation

According to the National Crime Prevention Council, apartments have an 85 percent greater chance of being burglarized than a single-family homeowner or rental property.

Apartment security should be a priority for landlords to provide for tenants, but it’s really up to you, the tenant, to ensure your security. When hunting for a security-minded apartment complex, consider the following:

1. Home security systems: Today’s systems are wireless and portable. You don’t need to own a house or have a contractor install it. Ask if you have permission to install an in-apartment home security system with motion detectors. This should not be negotiable. Wireless home security systems are non-invasive and inexpensive.
2. Peephole: Require a peephole on your door.
3. Door security: If the doors are glass-paned opposed to solid-core doors, then your potential landlord isn’t concerned about your security. Doors should have a knob lock and a deadbolt, and the doorjamb and hinges should be reinforced. Search door reinforcement online to see what your options are.
4. Surveillance cameras: Having one to 16 cameras with signage lets the bad guy know he’s being watched. Most camera systems can be remotely accessed with your mobile phone or tablet.
5. High-wattage sodium lighting: You cameras will work better with good lighting. Exterior lighting on the perimeter lets the bad guy know he can’t hide. (Bonus: Cockroaches hate light too.)
6. Parking lot security fencing: Perimeter fencing six feet high is a great deterrent.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to BestHomeSecurityCompanys.com discussing burglar proofing your home on Fox Boston. Disclosures.

Filed Under: Best Home security

Banks rely on usernames and passwords as a layer of protection and authentication to prevent criminals from accessing your accounts. However researchers now show that your password—even though it may be a relatively “strong” one, might not be strong enough.

When you create a password and provide it to a website, that site is supposed to then convert them to “hashes” as Ars Technica explains “Instead, they work only with these so-called one-way hashes, which are incapable of being mathematically converted back into the letters, numbers, and symbols originally chosen by the user. In the event of a security breach that exposes the password data, an attacker still must painstakingly guess the plaintext for each hash—for instance, they must guess that “5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99″ is the MD5 hashes for “password”.

But Ars did an experiment with some newbie technologist all the way up to expert hackers to see what they could do to crack the hash.

“The characteristics that made “momof3g8kids” and “Oscar+emmy2″ easy to remember are precisely the things that allowed them to be cracked. Their basic components—”mom,” “kids,” “oscar,” “emmy,” and numbers—are a core part of even basic password-cracking lists. The increasing power of hardware and specialized software makes it trivial for crackers to combine these ingredients in literally billions of slightly different permutations. Unless the user takes great care, passwords that are easy to remember are sitting ducks in the hands of crackers.”

How to get hacked

Dictionary attacks: Avoid consecutive keyboard combinations— such as qwerty or asdfg. Don’t use dictionary words, slang terms, common misspellings, or words spelled backward. These cracks rely on software that automatically plugs common words into password fields. Password cracking becomes almost effortless with a tool like “John the Ripper” or similar programs.

Simple passwords: Don’t use personal information such as your name, age, birth date, child’s name, pet’s name, or favorite color/song, etc. When 32 million passwords were exposed in a breach last year, almost 1% of victims were using “123456.” The next most popular password was “12345.” Other common choices are “111111,” “princess,” “qwerty,” and “abc123.”

Reuse of passwords across multiple sites: Reusing passwords for email, banking, and social media accounts can lead to identity theft. Two recent breaches revealed a password reuse rate of 31% among victims.

Protect yourself:

1. Make sure you use different passwords for each of your accounts.
2. Be sure no one watches when you enter your password.
3. Always log off if you leave your device and anyone is around—it only takes a moment for someone to steal or change the password.
4. Use comprehensive security software and keep it up to date to avoid keyloggers (keystroke loggers) and other malware.
5. Avoid entering passwords on computers you don’t control (like computers at an Internet café or library)—they may have malware that steals your passwords.
6. Avoid entering passwords when using unsecured Wi-Fi connections (like at the airport or coffee shop)—hackers can intercept your passwords and data over this unsecured connection.
7. Don’t tell anyone your password. Your trusted friend now might not be your friend in the future. Keep your passwords safe by keeping them to yourself.
8. Depending on the sensitivity of the information being protected, you should change your passwords periodically, and avoid reusing a password for at least one year.
9. Do use at least eight characters of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols in your password. Remember, the more the merrier.

10. Strong passwords are easy to remember but hard to guess. Iam:)2b29! — This has 10 characters and says “I am happy to be 29!” I wish.

11. Use the keyboard as a palette to create shapes. %tgbHU8*- Follow that on the keyboard. It’s a V. The letter V starting with any of the top keys. To change these periodically, you can slide them across the keyboard. Use W if you are feeling all crazy.

12. Have fun with known short codes or sentences or phrases. 2B-or-Not_2b? —This one says “To be or not to be?”

13. It’s okay to write down your passwords, just keep them away from your computer and mixed in with other numbers and letters so it’s not apparent that it’s a password.

14. You can also write a “tip sheet” which will give you a clue to remember your password, but doesn’t actually contain your password on it. For example, in the example above, your “tip sheet” might read “To be, or not to be?”

15. Check your password strength. If the site you are signing up for offers a password strength analyzer, pay attention to it and heed its advice.

While you must do your part to manage effective passwords, banks are working in the background to add additional layers of security to protect you. For example, financial institutions are incorporating complex device identification, which looks at numerous characteristics of the online transaction including the device you are using to connect. iovation, an Oregon-based security firm, goes a step further offering Device Reputation, which builds on complex device identification with real-time risk assessments. iovation knows the reputations of over 1.3 billion devices in iovation’s device reputation knowledge base. By knowing a devices reputation, banks can better determine whether a particular device is trustworthy before a transaction has been approved.

Robert Siciliano, personal security and identity theft expert contributor to iovation. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Mobile was Hacked! See him knock’em dead in this identity theft prevention video. Disclosures.

Filed Under: iovation

Need a new roof, home security system, kitchen, driveway or furnace? At some point, you will. And when you do, you’ll search out reputable contractors who offer fair pricing—via the classified section of the local paper, an online search, Craigslist, or by making some calls to friends and family who know someone. Each resource provides its own set of pros and cons, and scammers use every resource.

1. Reduce your risk. People don’t do their homework. People are naïve and have no clue that someone may be looking to scam them, and they think they are so smart that nobody can scam them. But if you are smart enough to know that this can happen to you and do your best to prevent it, you reduce the risks associated with contractor fraud.
2. Do your homework. Read up on what the processes are to do the job at hand. While a new roof or home alarm may not be something you want to learn how to do, there are plenty of “do-it-yourself” (or “DIY”) websites that can teach you. Spending two minutes searching and 20 minutes reading can save you money and make you sound intelligent to the contractor by asking the right questions.
3. Hire right. Do business with someone you know, like and trust. Use well-known brands that vet contractors and have zero-tolerance policies for shoddy work. Find a friend or other trusted source who does know a contractor and hire that contractor. Use the Better Business Bureau when looking for reputable companies.
4. Get three bids. Be cognizant of how prospective contractors handle themselves, their level of understanding of the work at hand, and whether or not they voluntarily offer up references. Don’t just automatically trust the guy with the whitest teeth and lowest price. Pay attention to your gut.
5. Check references. If it makes sense for the job at hand, drive by a house that the contractor referenced and actually look to see the quality of the work that was done. Often, construction jobs costs thousands—and taking the time to check work is worth your time.
6. Get everything in writing. Make sure the contract that clearly spells it all out.
7. Buy the stock yourself. Many contractors will request money up front to do the job. Often they need that money as a “commitment” to do the job and motivate them to fill their trucks up with the tools and stock to do the job. I recommend you go with them to whatever supplier they get their stock from and pay for it directly. If they charge a markup on the stock (it’s usually 15 percent), tell them you’ll gladly give that to them.
8. Pay in thirds. You’ve already paid for the stock, so now all you have to do is pay for labor: one third upon showing up to do the work, one third halfway through the job and one third when they are done.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to BestHomeSecurityCompanys.com discussing burglar proofing your home on Fox Boston. Disclosures.

Filed Under: Best Home security

Banks usually have relatively secure systems to maintain and protect online banking activities. They’ve spent billions to ensure that criminal hackers don’t liquidate all of our accounts. But criminals spend all their time seeking vulnerabilities and often find some way to make a fraudulent withdrawal.

Over the past decade as we have all (mostly) banked and bought stuff online, criminals have formed organized web mobs to sniff out transactions and take over existing accounts and in some cases open up new accounts.

American Banker reports an example of what can still go wrong: “the $2 billion-asset bank is suing Wallace & Pittman, a Crosstown law firm, to recover funds the firm relayed electronically to Russia after an email that purported to be from an industry group lured someone at the firm to surrender their user name and network password, the Charlotte Observer reported.”

The fraudsters used the access to install software on at least one of the firm’s computers that allowed them to hijack its account.

“Masquerading as Wallace & Pittman, the thieves instructed Park Sterling to transfer roughly $336,600 through JPMorgan Chase to a recipient in Moscow. The law firm asked Park Sterling to stop the transfer after receiving confirmation of it, but the request allegedly came too late.”

To defend against all of these hacks the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) recommends to financial institutions what’s called a “layered approach” of anti-fraud tools and techniques to combat this type of crime. Meaning it’s not simply a matter of applying a firewall and having anti-virus to protect the network, but going much deeper in protecting many interaction points within the banking site (not just login) and using a variety of proven fraud prevention solutions.

That includes sophisticated methods of identifying devices and knowing their reputation (past and current behavior and other devices they are associated with) the moment they touch the banking website. The FFIEC has recognized complex device identification strategies as a viable solution that’s already proven strong at very large financial institutions. ReputationManager360 by iovation leads the charge with device reputation encompassing identification and builds on device recognition with real-time risk assessment, uniquely leveraging both the attributes and the behavior of the device.

Consumers still need to apply antivirus, antispyware and a firewall and must never respond to emails requesting usernames and passwords and avoid clicking links in emails.

Robert Siciliano, personal security and identity theft expert contributor to iovation. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Mobile was Hacked! See him knock’em dead in this identity theft prevention video. Disclosures.

Filed Under: iovation

As companies cut costs, and employees desire more freedom of choice, they increasinglybring their own mobile  devices to work. . The opportunity to eliminate the significant expenses associated with corporate mobile devices excites even the most staid CFO, and the IT guys are told to “make it work.” This development has come to be known by its acronym“BYOD” (Bring Your Own Device).

Sometimes there is no enforced policy in place. Employees do what they want, and permission happens later, if at all. The nurse brings her personal iPad to the hospital and uses it to record patient data she sends via email to the doctor, in addition to reading a book during precious downtime. The salesperson plugs a smartphone into their work PC to charge or sync something, or check personal email over the corporate Wi-Fi.

Using your personal device in the office is convenient and simple, but it’s not secure. Do you have anti-virus installed? Is your iPad’s wireless connection encrypted? Is the app being used secure? What if the device is lost on the bus on the way home—the device with confidential patient information, emails, or presentations on it?

One of the IT Department’s deepest concerns is regulated data. Almost all businesses operate under some form of regulation where fines or penalties are imposed in the event of a data breach: the leak of personally identifiable information like names, addresses, account numbers, and health records.

Then there’s the issue of your device breaking something else on the network. While your company’s IT guyhas a relative lock on all the work laptops, desktops, and even some of the mobiles, the IT department quickly loses control if you bring your new Droid or iPad and then connect it to the corporate network. Now the IT guy has to worry if that last app you downloaded will infect other computers on the network.

No matter what you do, make sure whenever you use your BYOD on a wireless network that the device is protected.  I use VPN specifically when I’m on my portable wireless devices. If I’m on my PC laptop, iPhone or iPad and I’m traveling on business, I know I’m going to be connecting to various free public Wi-Fi services at the airport and in my hotel or at a coffee shop. Before I connect to any Wi-Fi, I launch Hotspot Shield VPN. It’s a free VPN, but I prefer the paid version; the expanded paid option is a little quicker and offers a cleaner interface. Either way, it’s agreat option that will protect your entire web surfing session, securing your connections on all your devices and eliminating some of the potential headaches for your IT department.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield VPN. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

Filed Under: Hotspot Sheild