As we all know, not only in the private sector, but also in the commercial and professional fields, Internet is playing a very important role these days. The current e-commerce scenario hints at a drastic change in customers’ spending habits due to the countless shopping sites mushrooming on the web. The banking sector has turned into an online affair as well, with majority of bank transitions being conducted online. Such is the effect of Internet, that it’s not surprising to see even ‘Education’ turning net-savvy with majority of schools and colleges modifying their conventional teaching methods.
These are just a few examples which emphasize the growing popularity of Internet in the private and professional fields. But internet has its own pros and cons too. Along with myriad opportunities and advantages, internet also brings along with it scores of threats like data breach, online theft etc. Trained cyber criminals are even capable to attack big online shopping sites and ‘online funds transfer’ sites, like eBay and PayPal. These Cyber thugs have found success in hacking the banking sites as well.
Cyber Crime 2013
Huge risks have always been associated with Internet usage. Everyday there are countless cases of online identity theft, financial fraud, hacked accounts and several other forms of cyber attacks that lead to losing customers and an eventual financial loss. The growing number of net users has ultimately increased the risk of becoming a victim of cyber-crime. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest cyber attacks in 2013.
Evernote
The online note-taking application, Evernote notified 50 million users in April that hackers had gained access to customers’ email addresses, user names and encrypted passwords.
LivingSocial
Daily deals website LivingSocial, warned its users in April about a hacking attack that probably had compromised the personal data of more than 50 million of its customers.
Schnucks
Grocery store chain Schnucks issued a statement in March, that 2.4 million customers had their credit card numbers compromised during a four-month breach.
Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts
The Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts was hacked sometime between the fall and February, exposing as many as 160,000 Social Security numbers and 1 million driver’s license numbers.
Twitter said in early February that hackers may have gained access to user names, email addresses and passwords of as many as 250,000 users.
Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp.
New York-based Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. said in February that hackers had gained access to about 110,000 customers’ information.
Safety Rules to Minimize the Hazards
Information security tends to attract more threats. It’s difficult to foresee how complex the next threat will be. But fortunately, this situation can be handled with some simple solutions or precautionary steps. Here are some of the points that need to be taken care of while accessing the internet:
- Always choose to buy from secure site (that displays a green https:// url and closed padlock icon)
- Always use alpha-numeric passwords (combination of lower and upper case letters with symbols and numbers)
- Avoid using embedded keypads (keyloggers is always ready to access your data)
- Make it a habit to use updated versions of browsers, software etc.
Although, absolute security cannot be guaranteed, but there are surely some methods to prevent hackers from stealing your personal information.
Security Certificate for Web – SSL
An SSL certificate contains a lot of identifiable information in it, like certificate owner’s details, validity duration and a unique algorithm signature. This signature is the most important part of the SSL certificate.
Confidentiality, integrity and authenticity are the terms aptly associated with Internet security. There have always been great efforts to achieve the highest level of security in order to minimize the online frauds, phishing and other forms of cyber attacks on the internet. For online stores, banking sectors or any other websites dealing with online financial transactions; SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificate is the best option to prevent hackers from attacking the websites. Strong encryption provided by this digital certificate is currently the best guarantee for online security and privacy.
Advantages of Security Certificates
Security certificates play a major role in encrypting personal information like passwords, email addresses, contact numbers etc and avoid identity thefts on the internet.
An SSL certificate ensures data confidentiality by establishing bidirectional authentication. It contributes more than any other online security tool in offering assurance and safety by protecting the website against unauthorized manipulation.
- An SSL Certificate enables encryption of sensitive data throughout the online transactions
- Every SSL Certificate holds distinctive and authenticated information about the certificate owners.
Summing Up
The importance of data security has increased in recent years, especially in case of e-commerce websites and securing confidential data on the web. As a result, even small-scale online businesses and private websites started relying on SSL certificates for boosting their website traffic and generating confidence among their visitors.
