Cybercrime remains one of the greatest threats to civilisation and it is even about to get more complicated as the world moves closer to singularity – a time that artificial intelligence is expected to surpass man’s intellectual capacity.
An interesting world with two groups of people with completely different motives i.e. those who mean well and those who want to illegally exploit individuals and organisations while benefiting from what is expected to become a highly lucrative industry.
Cybersecurity Ventures has predicted that cybercrime damages will cost the world $6tn annually by 2021. Now you know one reason why hackers will be motivated to work harder than ever.
Today’s piece will largely focus on the imperatives of having a solid online security plan for 2018, one that I hope you’d take seriously.
The average internet user hopes to be safe and protected while shopping or doing other things online, but some things that are meant to be done to ensure this safety are often taken for granted.
“People, me included, are lazy,” says a Web Developer, Joe Tortuga, “And ease of use is inversely related to security. If it’s just difficult, people won’t just do it.”
Well, if you don’t work towards a safer internet for yourself and others, then who would? One of the most important online security measures that we should adopt is using strong, difficult-to-guess passwords.
Alas, in most cases, our passwords are not strong enough to confuse a hacker who tries to find a back door. A strong password should contain different characters that make it difficult to guess.
In some cases, when signing up for a particular service on the internet, users use their real details, an online approach that many internet security experts kick against.
“What happens is that you build up an online profile of yourself across several sites that hackers can use to guess your weak passwords,” says Murphy Shaun, CEO of Online Security Agency, PrivateGiant.
It is imperative to create different usernames for different websites especially if such websites that have not put in place adequate security measures. You may also choose to add a differentiation model towards your usernames and password. That way, you give a hacker tough time to steal anything confidential to you.
Another aspect of security that is important is your online payment choices. An increasing number of people use their credit or debit cards to make payment online and this number will continue to rise way into the future particularly for developing economies such as Nigeria.
Some experts like Shaun argue that using a credit card to make purchases is just — Finish Reading on the Punch
