Chris Gondran, Senior Vice President and Director of Information Security for Home Bank, guides us on how to protect ourselves from internet identity thieves.
Chris earned an MBA from UL – Lafayette and has earned several industry certifications in Information Systems Security. His career has been built on helping others keep their assets safe. We're grateful to Home Bank for bringing us this much-needed message during Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
It seems so often we’re either getting bogus texts or emails from someone trying to hack our personal account data or reading about data breaches occurring while others fail to protect their customer databases. We can all agree that the days of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are long gone, yet criminals are still "robbing the bank" as we all find ourselves vulnerable to cyber security thieves!
Cybersecurity is the protection of digital information systems. Chris says he "likens it to anything connected to the internet. Emails, cloud applications, and or a wire transfer such as an ACH payment."
We are more vulnerable than ever before. Protecting your username and passwords is a critical step. It's a 'no-no' to use the same passwords for all of your online accounts. Think of all the accounts you use: Facebook, LinkedIn, your bank account, your car note, paying the electric bill, etc. Your information can end up on the dark net, a parallel internet that criminals use to sell your data to hackers. So if your Facebook account is hacked, the criminals will take that combination of username and password and attempt to use it on all your other online accounts. Chris says that criminals have sophisticated automated computer systems and subscription software they can use to run thousands of log-in data info at any given time. Visit ic3.gov to file a complaint with the FBI (IC3) if you believe you have been the victim of an Internet crime or if you want to file on behalf of another person you believe has been such a victim; the site is also a treasure trove of information of scams and crimes being committed throughout the U. S.
October is CyberSecurity Awareness Month. It is an important reminder that human error is the biggest cause of cybersecurity breaches and we must stay on high alert. Responsibility and accountability for our online information rest upon each of us. Criminals are outthinking us all the time. There are even companies that offer malicious tools as a service. Bad actors who know nothing about hacking can go on the dark web, buy a database of email addresses and download them into software that will do the hacking for them. Chris Gondran noted that some of these companies are so big they have HR departments.
What motivates Cybercriminal activity? The most popular is financial gain, followed by people holding grudges against you (former employee or girlfriend/boyfriend), and espionage (foreign countries who disagree with our policies and just want to hurt the enemy via cybersecurity means).
Chris says "it's always a cat-and-mouse game between the security world and the criminals. Once they realize what we're doing to bypass them, they figure out new ways to get around it."
Criminals use various methods to trick us and use deception to get us to perform an action contrary to our best interests. What to look for in "social engineering?" "Vishing" is the use of voice messages, "smishing" is the use of text messages, and "phishing" is an email....all of which are utilized to reel us in for a scam. Scammers will send out 100,000s of messages knowing that a small percentage of people who receive them will be vulnerable and accept the bait. If you get a message that you question, tell the person you'll call them back. Then check it out,