Wednesday, June 25, 2008

How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

Traditionally, by locking up all the important documents and files is considered safe. Due to the advance in technology, it however does not work that way anymore.

You might wonder, how secure is considered as secure in network system?
Have you ever purchased any item from the Internet? Or have you experienced making any transaction through e-banking? Performing Internet activities which involve personal data could be risky, because the chances of leaking or theft these information is higher.
Therefore I’m here to share with you some tips regarding how to safeguard your personal and financial data.

1. Setting the passwords
character as long as possible. The log in passwords of financial transaction should be more than 6 characters, and the characters should exclude the IC number or date of birthday to prevent anyone to trace your personal and financial confidential data. Bear in mind; do not divulge your account access passwords to other.

2. You should be able to verify the security web site, especially the web site which is financial-based. A secure financial web site should
have the certificate of ‘Veri Sign Secure Site and also certified by ‘Web Trust’. The purpose of getting ‘Veri Sign Secure Site’ certificate is to ensure data confidentiality and integrity, and all information transmitted over the Internet is encrypted using the 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol from Verisign Certificate Authority. SSL is a secure way of transferring information between two computers on the Internet using encryption. Whereas ‘Web Trust’ is to certify that the web site complies with the international web security standard. For example Maybank2u.com is reliable because it has been certified by both of these.

3. Antivirus. Top 5 Online Scanners which recommended by
Mary Landesman are Trend Micro's Housecall, Kaspersky Online Scanner, Kaspersky File Scanner, Virustotal Jotti Online, and Malware Scan. By scanning the computer with any of these antivirus softwares before performing any financial transaction, it helps you to ensure there is no spyware in your computer.

The last but not the least, you should avoid accessing financial information in public, such as the outdoor wi-fi access. The financial transaction data seem to be open to the public and anyone who is IT expertise can easily trace the information.

Wish to know more?
http://www.verisign.com/
http://antivirus.about.com/od/freeantivirussoftware/tp/aaonline.htm

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