Wilma C. Inventor-Miranda l November 1, 2023 l Business Mirror
WITH the current technological advancement—at a pace sometimes even faster than the security features to be set up around it—how can we be sure of the safety of our digital space?
But the question of how safe is our digital space can also begin with us. How careful are we in protecting our own digital space?
We store a lot of personal information on our gadgets. Each one of us should be informed enough to know how to properly use the different digital media online—e-mails, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. If you are not careful it is possible that your personal or business information can be compromised – stolen or deleted without our knowledge.
The danger is, if we are not careful, we can provide too much information in our personal digital space or even in our businesses’ spaces. There are social media sites that post some kind of games luring people to play them. For instance, games asking for the names of your pets, or asking your birth month to reveal your personality, and other similar trivia games.
Innocently too, you post the death of your grandparents which could give them the idea of the maiden’s name of your mother which is also a security question for some banks, etc. These are security questions that the scheming readers need to access your bank accounts or vital personal information.
In social media, we greet each other on birthdays, even birthdays of our families—nothing wrong with that but just make sure that your Facebook or any social media account is not public, for birthdays are vital information for credit cards and bank accounts. It is also fun when you post vacations or any family outing with no one at home because for some people their homes were wiped clean by a burglar when they came back. If you have to post, don’t make it real-time. And don’t let people know in real time where you are or where you are at that moment traveling. I can see some people even posting the location map of where their destination is!
Emails are also a favorite place for fraudsters to hack your bank accounts. If you received an email from your bank, do not click any link. The domain name can even appear legitimate but you have to be careful if that is really the website of your bank. For instance, one bank has a website @bankph.com and the fraudster created @bank.com.ph which appears legitimate. Fraudsters can really be very creative in luring people to fraudulent sites. Instead of clicking the link in your email, the safest step is to go to your bank application and log in directly to check notifications – close the email – or if you are suspicious move it to the Trash since you might forget next time and click it. This applies to other notices with clickable links. They say 90 percent of threats of computer risks are through emails. However, only a small portion or none at all (for smaller companies) is budgeted to secure this important information channel.
Businesses should be concerned with three areas in protecting their digital spaces—prevention, protection, and empowerment. Large businesses can afford to have digital cybersecurity platforms covering all these areas. Even so, no strong platform can withstand the carelessness of each member of the business organization. Employees for instance have their own personal accounts on their own gadgets or personal computers. But sometimes they can unknowingly reveal sensitive information which can be open to hackers. Training our employees not only in the use of the company’s computers or gadgets but also in the use of their personal devices is one way to prevent hackers from getting company’s private information.
For small businesses, which can hardly afford such huge budgeted cybersecurity platforms, does not mean that they should ignore the importance of such platforms. No matter how small, it is better than nothing. For one, training people in the organization on how to protect their cyberspace is something that all businesses can afford although on different levels.
The digital space is constantly evolving, and the way to protect ourselves is to update ourselves on the latest security measures to protect, prevent, and repair or mitigate any breach if it already occurred. No security measures are perfect and there will always be times when a breach is able to get through our system. Let us not be “firefighters” who only act when the problem is there. Let us provide contingency measures in case something like a security breach gets through in our information system in the future.
While there are negative sides, let us not forget the positive side of the internet world. However, each one of us can make this world a digitally safe space if we do our part in taking the necessary precautions.
*** Wilma Miranda is the 2023 Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines, a managing partner of Inventor, Miranda & Associates, CPAs and a member of the KPS Outsourcing Inc. Board of Directors. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinion of these institutions.