Owners of small and midsize businesses routinely take into account the risk of a fire burning down the building, or a customer or employee getting hurt on company property.
But what about exposure to botnets, data thieves, cyber scammers, hacktivists and disgruntled insiders?
Data is the new currency, and because SMBs now routinely collect, store and access sensitive and valuable data across...
Read MoreBy Jeanine Skowronski
If the “Internal Revenue Service” (IRS) called you up last year demanding payment, well, you weren’t alone.
Fake IRS and other imposter scams topped the list of fastest-growing complaints to state and local consumer protection agencies in 2015, according to an annual survey by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and the North American Consumer Protection...
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Employers looking to dial up the correct mix of benefits in order to retain valued employees are increasingly including identity theft protection services as a perk.
Research firm Willis Towers Watson predicts identity theft protection, offered by 35 percent of employers in 2015, could double to nearly 70 percent by 2018, which would make it the fastest-...
Read MoreWhile it’s important to do everything you can to protect yourself from identity-related crime when you’re traveling, it’s equally important to do everything you can to protect your home and the breadcrumbs of your identity that you leave behind.
Every possible kind of identity-related crime exists in a dormant state in your home. In more...
Read MoreLet’s face it, there’s no bigger downer than working all day and coming home to images of other people’s awesome vacations — that is, nothing except maybe coming home to find out you’ve been robbed or had your identity stolen.
According the Pew Research Center, 65% of adults use social media, and among people aged 18 to 29, the percentage...
Read MoreBy Roger Yu
In July 2015, a hacker who goes by the name of Phineas Fisher breached an Italian technology company that, ironically, sells spying and hacking software tools.
Fisher exfiltrated more than 400 gigabytes from the company, called Hacking Team, and declared that his motive was to stop its “abuses against human rights.”
“That’s the beauty and...
Read MoreSummer storms can turn deadly in an instant. Taking steps now can help keep identity thieves at bay while you focus on protecting your family. Learn more in this infographic about the potential risk in your region, what kind of information is vulnerable and how to guard against identity thieves.
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Read MoreBy Roger Yu
Most company senior executives and board members have no clue how to gauge the full scope of financial trauma engendered by a major network breach.
How does one calculate the value of lost trust of customers who take their patronage elsewhere after a well-publicized cyber attack, for instance?
Lost future sales generally are not accounted for in calculating cyber attack costs. A lack of planning for such variables potentially could cost companies...
Read MoreBy Constance Brinkley-Badgett
Phone scammers often pretend to be debt collectors, election or IRS officials — heck, they’ve even pretended to be you calling you to scam yourself. Now they’re pretending to be the FBI in hopes of swindling you out of some cash and possibly your personal information as well.
The FBI’s Philadelphia field office issued a warning Wednesday saying a phone scam that...
Read MoreHow bad has the ransomware problem become? The state auditor of Ohio held a news conference because local government agencies keep falling for ransomware attacks. And a firm that tracks domain activity found a 3,500 percent increase in ransomware-related domain name registrations in the past quarter. Hackers love to cut and paste, so imitation is the surest sign that something is working.
Recall the high-profile, alarming...
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