At the age when social networking is at its peak and flow of information is uncontrolled and unlimited, the major question lies with how much information need to be shared in the cyberspace. While the cyber netizens seem quite frivolous with their information on social media, there is a lot of data sharing happening at the back end of it.
A workshop on cyber security trends was held at Xavier Institute of Social Service here on Saturday in collaboration with SecurEyes Techno Service, aimed at providing the audience with insights into the new trends surfacing the cyber security platform such as Cyber Security Hygiene and protection against Social engineering techniques used by criminals and hackers.
With the growing automation of system and increasing its complexity the risk of cyber crime has also increased manifold. “In India with a population of 1.3 billion, there is 42% Internet penetration which is huge, and this puts us at much greater risk at the hands of cyber criminals,” said Karmendra Kohli, CEO and co founder of SecurEyes, a Bangalore-based cyber security firm.
When asked about who is vulnerable to cyber crime, anyone and everyone on the Internet, replied Kohli. The importance of cyber safety cannot be emphasised enough without realising the extent to which individuals and organisations fall prey to cyber crimes, he added.
“Even the messaging giant, WhatsApp which claims its messages to be end to end encrypted stores a copy of its users’ data. Be very careful when sharing user credentials online, closely guard your Internet identity by not oversharing,” said Kohli while advocating Cyber Hygiene – how to be careful with what we share online, especially for young students who fall in trap of cyber crime due to their reckless use of social media.
Using pirated operating system in computers, surfing and downloading from unauthenticated sites, using free apps and bit torrents enhances one’s chances of getting hacked. “Your system can be hacked to compromise your information or use your system to perform cyber crime at a larger scale,” told Kohli. Social Engineering is another skill used these days to hack one’s mind before hacking their data. Persuasive phone calls and texts to obtain user credentials for the purpose of money laundering is quite common.