{"id":639,"date":"2015-02-02T14:44:52","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T22:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=639"},"modified":"2015-02-02T14:44:52","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T22:44:52","slug":"stay-secure-being-safe-in-an-age-of-cyber-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/stay-secure-being-safe-in-an-age-of-cyber-warfare\/","title":{"rendered":"Stay Secure: Being safe in an age of cyber warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"By<\/a>
By Daniel Frank
Web Designer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, victims of identity theft in America
\nrose from 8.6 million victims in 2010 to 16.6 million victims in 2012.<\/p>\n

Today, we are hearing more and more about cyber attacks like the infamous 2013
\nhack on Target, where millions of names and credit card numbers were stolen.<\/p>\n

In light of most recent events like Western\u2019s Internet outage from a Direct Denial of Service (DDOS) attack and phishing attacks targeting Western employees, many students may be wondering how to keep their personal data safe from intruders.<\/p>\n

Here are some good basic practices to protect your information from being exposed to snooping eyes:<\/p>\n

1: If it doesn\u2019t need to be online, don\u2019t put it online.<\/strong><\/p>\n

From family photos to the photos that you might dare to send through Snapchat: if
\nyou don\u2019t want people to see them, don\u2019t let them leave your phone or computer. Events like last year\u2019s “The Fappening 2014\u201d scandals are a good example that not even Apple can completely protect your privacy against social engineering hacks.<\/p>\n

2: Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next time you\u2019re web browsing on your phone or your computer, look at the URL of the website you\u2019re on. At the far left of the URL, you should see an \u2018http\u2019 or \u2018https\u2019. The \u2018s\u2019 in \u2018https\u2019 stands for secure, meaning that your session with that
\nparticular website is secure. \u2018Secure\u2019 in this case means that each packet of data being transferred between you and the website is encrypted with a special key.<\/p>\n

If you only see \u2018http\u2019, your information is readily available to anyone connected at some point between your computer and the server, and you should not transfer sensitive data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other vital information.<\/p>\n

3: Stay updated.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Software is riddled with vulnerabilities. As researchers discover these vulnerabilities, they inform the programmers that can patch those security holes. The patches are released as updates. Those annoying pop-ups that harass you every day to update not only enhance your software to run faster, they also protect you
\nfrom the latest exploits.<\/p>\n

4: Don\u2019t download it. Don\u2019t open it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t download and open things that you are unsure of. Emails from unknown senders are almost guaranteed to have malware in whatever attachments are attached to the email. On the contrary, emails in .zip format from known senders could also be dangerous if you don\u2019t know why you\u2019re receiving that email from that person. <\/p>\n

Malware will compromise your computer and can do anything from completely locking
\nyou out of your computer to sending every single stroke of your keyboard to an unknown location for the malware\u2019s creator to use as he wishes.<\/p>\n

By following these four guidelines, you will reduce your chances of getting your
\npersonal information stolen. But the truth in the matter is that your information is never truly safe once your computer is exposed to the Internet.<\/p>\n

When you swipe your card at the grocery store, your card information travels over the Internet. New exploits are being discovered every day that can compromise even the most secure systems. But by following safe practices, you can limit the chances of your identity from being stolen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, victims of identity theft in America rose from 8.6 million victims in 2010 to 16.6 million victims in 2012. Today, we are hearing more and more about cyber attacks like the infamous 2013 hack on Target, where millions of names and credit card numbers were stolen. In light […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}