Cybersecurity, a must-read
Hello fellow steemians, I hope you all are doing perfectly well. Today I want us to talk about cyber security. A lot of people have heard this term but have little knowledge concerning it.
The world today has developed so much due to technology. The internet has made everything very easy. We can order food, book hotels, order rides, and do a lot of things in a much easier way. We can even bank online now.
Given all these, the fear of cyber attack comes in. While we are scared that people might steal our sensitive information because everything is online, hackers are happy because this presents them with the chance of stealing certain information for their use.
Day in and day out, hackers become smarter and smarter and the way they can beat virus scans and maneuver past firewalls still baffles the world. These people are very smart and day in and day out find new ways to accomplish their tasks.
This raises the issue of cybersecurity. This is a very important issue in our modern world and being ignorant has become very expensive. If you choose to be ignorant, you might end up losing a lot of data. This is just to raise awareness.
Cyber security can be defined as using certain controls or other methods to protect our devices or data from cyber attacks. There are hackers out there that are always trying new ways and means to steal sensitive data and they do so through cyber attacks. These individuals are known as hackers.
Knowing the way hackers achieve their aims will make it very easy to identify suspicious activities when we see one. Here are some of the ways hackers launch their cyber attacks.
General malware. Hackers sometimes steal information through malware. Malware can be a virus, malicious software that can be installed on your device without your knowledge. This goes on to steal information on your device for the hacker. So anytime you are using your device, just watch out for strange software. You should also be careful who you give your devices to. Whether to use or to fix, you should be very careful
Phishing. This method has become very popular in our society today. With this method, hackers send you emails containing certain links which require you to enter very sensitive information. Mostly, the emails seem to come from an organization that may be your bank. Sometimes, on WhatsApp platforms, we see posts like ‘man is giving away free data’. When you believe it and you enter your information, it goes straight to the hacker, and then you are dead.
It is advisable to click on websites that begin with ‘https’ rather than ‘http’. Http websites are not that secure and might be a phishing sites. Avoid entering sensitive information like passwords on just any site.Password attack. This is a very sensitive area. Our devices and accounts are locked with passwords to prevent unauthorized people from accessing them. Passwords should not be shared with friends not even family. But that is the mistake we do, we share our passwords with close ones without knowing their intentions. Another thing is we should stop using one password for many accounts and devices. This makes it easy for hackers. When they get your universal password, they can access every online activity of yours.
Man in the middle attack. This is simply known as impersonation. this mostly happens when a hacker can get in between a communication between you and the organization. this organization can be a bank, a school, or your workplace. For example, I can’t pretend to be your bank and communicate with you demanding certain sensitive information, and because you know it’s your bank you are willing to give us this information. when this hacker gets hold of your information, he or she then pretends to be you and communicates the same things to your bank demanding a bank account or an account balance. So in this case you might think you are talking to the bank and the bank might think it is talking to you but then both of you talking to a hacker. It is very difficult to know when you are face with such situation and I think the best way is for you to go there in person to answer any questions not over the phone or over text.
Drive by downloads. Sometimes we see links on the Internet on our phone and click it without knowing where is my to me to. You visit the site and you realize there is nothing there but then what you don’t know is that you have unknowingly downloaded a virus onto your computer. This virus will be hiding in your folders stealing information and feeding it to the hackers. Sometimes you realize that someone has used your social media accounts and you don’t know how your account was hacked or where the hacker got your password. Let us refrain from clicking strange link son the Internet.
Mal-advertising. Sometimes we playing games on our phones or going through our phones and almost immediately an advert pops up. Because the ad contains some items we need, we click it without thinking twice. There are adverts that have been coded to install malwares on your devices when you click it. You never know there is a malware on your computer until it is too late when all your information has been leaked. Just be careful with the way we click adverts any time they pop up.
Rogue softwares. I also called this softwares ‘pretenders’. Sometimes we feel our devices have been attacked by a virus so the best way is to go onto the net to download antivirus softwares. Hackers know this and able to create certain software that looks like antiviruses but they are not anti-viruses. They are also malware planted to steal information from ignorant downloaders.
This is not all. There are other ways hackers use to steal information but these stated ones are the most popular ones. Let us protect ourselves and not be ignorant about some of these things.
I hope you all learnt something new today.
Thank you for your attention