Holiday Safety and Security

 

December 14th, 2011 | Author: Dr. Ross Riggs

Recently I had a quick email from a company that I use and that I trust to help me keep my personal information safe and secure: LifeLock. Check them out at LifeLock.com.

Allow me to pass on some of the hints they gave regarding safety and security at the holidays (although we all “know” most of these things, we often don’t think about them, we are just too busy or we have the sometimes fatal “It will never happen to me” disease.) Still, reconsider some of these suggestions:

Shopping In-Store

1. Be aware of your surroundings and protect personal space at the ATM and registers.
2. Inspect ATMs and points of sale terminals and look for tampering before swiping cards.
3. Keep cards in sight when paying to deter dishonest cashiers.
4. Store all receipts and closely check your monthly statements to verify transactions.

Shopping Online

1. Be sure your anti-virus software is installed properly and up-to-date.
2. Shop with retailers you trust and who have positive Better Business Bureau ratings.
3. Avoid links and only visit shopping sites by directly typing in their website address.
4. Don’t purchase items while using public computers or shared wireless networks.

Thanks to LifeLock for those reminders. Did you know that it is very simple to put a ‘look alike’ card reader over the opening of an ATM that will copy all of your information as you use it? All the offender has to do is retrieve the card reader from the front of the ATM and download all the information it has stored while you used your card.

I struggle with having the desire to finish my shopping on-line even when I am on public access computers. I can be too trusting of my own anti-hacker software and forget that once the air is out in the electronic space it is free for the picking! I sometimes even trust LifeLock too much in those situations and say to myself, “Self, go ahead it will only take a second to ‘checkout’ besides LifeLock will tell you if someone intercepts my information. Well, that is true when it is happening on my computer, but what about while it floats around in space in the milliseconds it takes to do damage. Milliseconds are all it needs.

So, don’t let your kids unwisely use your card information, guard all your info lie it is vital to you, because even if it isn’t vital to you now, once it is in the hands of the bad guys, it will be!
If you can use a microchip reader blocking device to protect your credit cards like a lined wallet or card carrier, you should do so.

Just some ‘holiday safety thoughts’ to make your January bill payment easier, that is by at least making sure all those bills are truly yours!

Merry Christmas and a Safe & Secure New Year!

HEROES

 

December 7th, 2011 | Author: Dr. Ross Riggs

Growing up in the last half of the 20th century, it was not uncommon to hear people bemoan the lack of ‘real heroes’ in our society. In the first decade of this new century, that has changed. John Wayne has been quoted as saying, “Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway.” So many of our brave young men and women have saddled up and headed out to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They headed out not knowing what might lie ahead but they had been trained by the best. They had the best equipment and they had the backing of the best our society has to offer.

Recently, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue wrote a letter that was published in The Weekly Standard’s November 21 issue. He reported that over 1 million U.S. veterans are unemployed. “A staggering 27% of young veterans age 18 to 24 are unemployed.” As the U.S. military leaves Iraq, thousands more will separate from the service and the unemployment numbers could skyrocket. Currently there are no tax incentives for small business owners to hire a veteran. There aren’t any federal dollars available to these businesses to take a chance on hiring a vet. And yet, it is probably one of the best moves a business owner can make. Need someone disciplined? Need someone with a realistic view of the world, highly trained by the best, with more than the average applicant’s experience in working as a team member? Then, your best choice is a veteran.

Today is December 7th. Former President Franklin Roosevelt called this “…a day which shall live in infamy.” A great many vets have come and gone in the 70 years since that day. A great many heroes have given everything they had for this country. Now, it is our turn to be on the front line of a war against an enemy our parents or grandparents would be shocked to know exists. America was not ready for the terrorist type of guerilla warfare of Vietnam. Yet today, we have an enemy that straps bomb to children or sets roadside IED’s to kill indiscriminately. Whether you are former military now working in law enforcement, or current either active duty or Reservist or Guard, your role is one that we should remember. More than a particular day, we must remember the names and the faces of the vets; those who died and those who lived. Above all, American should be thankful for their sacrifice.

So, here we are. Seventy years since that fateful day when Japan struck in a multi-front assault against the United States and Great Britain. We are still fighting to keep our citizenry safe and yes, may we remember all the vets who were killed in Iran, Afghanistan or somewhere in between. We should be so very thankful for all the heroes America has seen across all those years. They were everyday people, like you. They were patriots. They probably were, as the ‘Duke’ said, “scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” May God bless all our heroes, our veterans. May you, if you are a business owner, have the ability to say “yes” to a veteran today that is looking for work. May God bless America.

BULLSEYE

December 2nd, 2011 | Author: Dr. Ross Riggs

Bullseye… for cartoon aficionados is Woody’s horse in Toy Story. In the real world, it refers to a target or being ‘on target’. Even in colloquial ‘isms’, bullseye refers to being directly on the point of the subject matter. Thanks to dreamstime.com for their depiction of just that, being directly on target.

Did you know that the Philippines consists of 7,107 separate islands (at low tide that number climbs to 7,108? (It is difficult to get flood insurance if you want to try to live on that last island!) The largest of the islands is Luzon wherein lies Manila. The most violent and heavily terrorist controlled island is Mindanao. It was on Mindanao that New Tribes missionaries Martin and Grace Burnham were kidnapped while at a scenic resort area and Martin was eventually killed). Rony Lewitinn of HSN recently reported on a major security breach for communications companies by a group operating in the Philippines. The security breach could have world-wide effects as information has been obtained that permited hackers to AT&T’s system to route money from a Saudi based terrorist financing group directly to terrorist groups operating locally and beyond. For the hackers to fulfill their intended goal, on an archipelago of over 7,100 islands, they had to know exactly where and how to hit their target. It did not happen without a great deal of planning. It required knowledge and skill. As one visual aid that uses a target to explain the principle, the three rings are: Could Know, Should Know, and the bullseye is Must Know. Consider all of the details that the hackers Must Know to achieve such a major score.

One of the best times to stop a terrorist pr any other criminal is in the planning stages when they must visit their target multiple times to develop intelligence on the target, design a strategy as they consider the weaknesses and strengths of the security system and determine when where and how to attack.

The target model is also used in prevention of attacks and developing a security strategy. In both scenarios whether an attack or protection, the bullseye remains the same. It is either the target to be compromised or the asset to be protected. If you are protecting it, every circle is a line of defense. If the outermost circle is strong enough, the inner circles are unnecessary but a perfect line of defense is impossible. There are always vulnerabilities and that is why there is redundancy and additional rings of security. It is within every ring that the would-be thieves, assassins, or terrorists risk detection and apprehension.

For every asset that requires protection, (and I believe this is true absolutely universally for literally every asset), the outer most ring of security, the first ring where detection is possible and the first ring that is most difficult to breach without being noticed is the public. It is the average citizen, the person who lives every day in the area where the event or some part of the event will take place.Often dismissed as ineffective, useless, and even ignorant by those who are charged with security of the asset, the public, properly informed on the Suspicious Activity Reporting System, for example, has the greatest potential to detect an attack in its earliest planning stages. They know when something is not right or something is out of place. If they can put words to what they know and they also are taught with whom to share those words, providing the “professionals” on the receiving end take time to listen, then the first ring of security will work. Learn to utilize the first ring of the target protection model, it is a valuable...