RSU 29 has many policies and procedures in place to try to ensure that your students are safe from cybercrime, data breaches and attacks. However, we can not control what happens at home and we would like to take this opportunity to impart a bit of net-wisdom.
Whether you know it or not cyber crime affects all of us. It comes in many different forms such as spam, cheap online drugs, investment advice, or get-rich-quick schemes. Scammers, either by email, by phone, or in person, will try to confuse or scare you into giving them your hard-earned money. We’ve become so accustomed to the unending torrent of dupe-by-email attempts that we’ve come up with a term for 80 percent of all emails that are ever sent or received — “spam.” Spam has become incorporated as the “norm” within our everyday lives but danger is always present. To take one of those spam emails seriously could bring you to the cleaners.
Spam isn’t the only way that scammers try to pull you into their web; they use many other tools. Phishing, spyware, other malware, and even phone scams exist in an effort to relieve you of your livelihood, important data, or even your identity. Only last week I received a phone call from someone who claimed to be from a “Document Processing Service.” They stated that someone had filed a complaint against me, that they needed me to call a phone number and provide a reference number and they would help me get the problem sorted. Working in security, I’ve seen these types of scams many times before. I asked the lady on the phone for her name and a call back number so that I could verify her identity, and just like that, she hung up on me, which confirmed that she was indeed trying to scam me.
Malware is a term that encompasses every piece of maligned software that is distributed to cause some sort of harm or loss. Viruses, spyware, adware, worms and Trojans all fall into the same camp and are all different types of malware. The way that they behave and the damage that they cause defines what category they fall into. One of the most dangerous new forms of malware is called “ransomware”. Ransomware is especially dangerous in that it denies you access to all of your files and requires that you pay a fee to regain that access. Ransomware does this by using encryption protocols to “scramble” your files, which can only then be “unscrambled” by a tool that the attacker provides. Unless a good, recent backup is available you are stuck paying the fee unless you don’t mind losing all of your data.
Attackers realize that as we evolve into a more technology-reliant society that our data is becoming more valuable to us. They’ve also come to the conclusion that they can make more money by holding this data ransom than they ever could make by trying to steal data from the computer or by tricking the user into giving them money through deception or advertisements. Identities can be stolen and sold on the black market, bank accounts wiped out, important work documents can be destroyed, it is all very scary stuff! You may be asking how we would protect ourselves against such a persistent and technologically advanced threat. The answer is education and vigilance.
Editor’s note: this article was the first in a series by Levesque on cyber safety.
