The Stay Safe Online Blog

The coronavirus pandemic threw working lives into disarray, but we cannot afford to sacrifice security for convenience.

New laws, expectations and COVID impact the flow of data: but keeping it safe is more important than ever.

A whirlwind romance and being swept off your feet by the perfect partner form the basis of many Hollywood romantic movie scripts. And as many of us are romantics at heart, the desire to believe it’s a possible scenario is burnt into our very being. In the harsh reality of life, though, scammers play on these emotions and use that desire to take cash fraudulently and destroy dreams. Romance scammers, with fake profiles and identities, strike up relationships with their potential victims on popular dating apps and through social media sites like Instagram and Facebook. They create elaborate stories of being in international business, working offshore with oil companies, actively serving in the military or even as an aid worker or doctor doing great things within impoverished communities. One thing for certain is they are not close by or in a position to meet.

On Thursday, January 28, the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) celebrated its annual Data Privacy Day event. We were joined by over 1,500 organizations and individuals from around the globe in an effort to generate awareness about the importance of data privacy and highlight ways to safeguard personal information.

This year, to kick off Black History Month, we want to shed light on some very important issues in our national community, as well as the cyber security community. It is critical to recognize that as minority communities make up more and more of the US population, the statistics for Black faces in Tech and InfoSec remain low.

There are two opposing truths at the top-of-mind for chief information officers across the world:
1. Customers want personalized, customized experiences to fit their in-the-moment needs.
2. Society at large is becoming more and more wary of companies tracking, mining, and, in the case of some companies, monetizing their data.

For the last fifteen years, the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) has tracked publicly-reported data breaches to identify trends, attack vectors, case studies, the number of people impacted by data breaches and much more. The release of the 2020 ITRC Data Breach Report and launch of the ITRC’s data breach tracking tool supports the Data Privacy Day 2021 initiative to help build trust among consumers and promote transparency around data collection practices.

Today is National Data Privacy Day, when many organizations and government agencies, including the FTC, join together to raise awareness about privacy issues and to offer tips and information. As more and more of our devices are connected and share information about us, privacy is increasingly important.

As more and more major data breaches are announced, it’s not surprising that consumers are left wondering “how does this keep happening?” Which is a fair question. But businesses like yours should be asking a more important question: what exactly am I doing to protect consumers’ personally identifiable information from data leaks, breaches, and unauthorized use/access? As we’ve learned from other major data breaches, the immediate damage of those attacks, on the surface, appears to be strictly monetary; however, there are much larger, long-lasting effects which can wreak additional havoc on businesses.

Carved into four tons of stone, the Code of Hammurabi is one of the earliest legal codes ever written. The code sets forth punishments and fines through almost 300 rules and standards. Surprisingly, at more than 6,000 words, it may be a quicker read than many of today’s end-user license agreements (EULAs) and Terms of Service (ToS), which companies require users to agree to before using their product.