Cyber Security and The Issues Surrounding The Safety of Information

Modern society today is more attached to technology than ever before, with people of all ages constantly checking their phones and tablets for the latest news updates. With society always using technological devices for a plethora of their needs, people leave precious info easily accessible to those with the knowledge and tools to obtain it. One of the biggest issues people face today is having to deal with keeping their information online safe, but that isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

Cyber security is an issue in which people, commonly referred to as hackers, will break into people’s online accounts using various methods to obtain personal information. Hackers will use a wide variety of methods to get the information needed to access someone’s account, the most common people may not even be aware could be occurring to them. One of the biggest ways is through what is called “Phishing Scams” and are done by sending out mass emails that mimic authentic companies/businesses, such as banks or subscription services, asking people to verify an account with a link, and upon clicking said link the hackers will be transferred all the necessary information of the person who clicked the links account. Another very important and major way hackers will attempt to get into accounts is by a method known as “Fault Injection” in which the hacker gains entry to a sites source code and attempts to find an opening that could be used to send certain commands back to the site’s servers to crash /trick it, which will leave data vulnerable. These two examples are far from the only tactics which people will use to break into accounts, and yet even though these things happen all the time in modern times, not many people take the time to properly protect their accounts.

To an individual, the results of failing to properly protect your information could lead to things such as identity theft or money being stolen online. However, not only individuals are affected by data breaches, as companies will often fall victim due to improper safety measures, such as the Ashley Madison information leak which happened in July 2015, where over twenty-five gigabytes of company data and personal user details were made available to the public by hackers.

I believe that not enough is being done to warn children and even adults about the dangers of not taking proper information safety precautions online. A possible solution to this is to incorporate a class in schools during elementary school to teach kids how to properly and safely traverse the online world, as kids today will be more involved in technology than ever and deserve to know how to be safe. I believe this is the correct solution to the current problem because if kids were being educated on how to protect themselves, future generations will know the importance of security online early on in life, which will only become even more important to know as technology proceeds to advance over time.

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