Tinsel. Lights. Fruitcake. Breathless warnings about identity threat. All of these are sure signs that the holiday season is upon us.
I was settling into my comfy leather couch last night to catch 30 minutes football when suddenly I was bombarded by some obviously agitated yet concerned announcer from the local news show telling me how I could be one of five people who would be exploited this season. The drumbeat of articles on the same subject is also growing to its annual December crescendo. (I must disclose that at one time I ran marketing for a company that had a PCI product and actually was one of the people who put such stories on the wire, so my hands are not completely clean on this subject).
I did come across a novel approach to the subject this morning. Jaikumar Vijayan, a respected security writer from Computerworld offers “Five ways to lose your identity (and wallet) this holiday season - How online shoppers can make their systems more attractive to online thieves”. He gets the point across by outlining five things you can do to ensure your identity gets stolen during the holiday crush.
I suppose the one positive is that the holiday hacking hype gives those of us in cyber security a platform to educate people about the dangers that are out there in cyberspace. Awareness is certainly a good start toward prevention and as Vijayan points out so well, there are some elementary steps you can take to protect yourself.
Maybe I just need to get over it and accept the annual hand wringing over credit cards and Christmas Commerce as part of the new normal for the holidays. After all, the advancements in technology reduce trips to the mall. And they allow me to watch the classic Rankin-Bass “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” any time I want in glorious HD from that same comfy couch instead of the old days when you better be home the night it aired or you got, as Yukon Cornelius himself would say, “nothing!”. Seems like an equitable trade.
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