Keep your PII to yourself

IA security is every person's responsibility. Criminals will go to great lengths to get Personal Identifying Information (PII) to steal a person's credit, bank accounts, and identity for their own personal gain. Almost every a person does online requires PII. From logging onto a social network to checking your bank account balance, some form of PII is required to access the information. What is PII? It can be a first name, last name, birth date, gender, address, or phone number to name a few. Just knowing a first name may seem innocent enough but a criminal can take the first name added with a picture of you from social media and put together to target your identity. There are safeguards to help keep a person's PII safe but it's up to each person to follow the correct measures in doing so. A few dont's would be: Don't post your full name on a public website. For social media, allows follow the rule of, the less they see, the less they know. Posting family pictures for your family to see is wonderful but not if security settings are set for public viewing. Do not post publicly you are leaving on vacation. This is an open door for criminals. Be aware of your surroundings while using an ATM. Even if it's inside a large store. If something seems suspicious report it to the proper authorities. Be aware of the phone calls asking for your bank account or credit card information. Neither one will ask for your PIN.

In the digital world, identity theft is a world wide problem. There are networks of criminals waiting to take advantage of a person who forgot to log off their computer, or didn't pay attention while walking into a secure area at work and they “shoulder surfed” in behind you. There are people who cruise through neighborhoods looking for an open home network to hack into. If this is done, they can steal your PII from your computer at home without you even knowing it. One way to prevent this is to secure your home network by using WPA/WEP Encryption. Do not broadcast network SSID, change the default password. As you can see there are many layers to protecting a home network. There are ways to also protect your computer (anti-virus software, firewall, etc) but there are also ways for the criminals to work around these measures. There will always be a threat of “digital intrusion” therefore it's up to each person to know what risks are there. Do keep your anti-virus updates, do shred mail or other things that contains PII, do log off computer when not in use. The job of protecting your PII starts with YOU.

Another area of concern is allowing young children online without supervision. They can click on a pop up without even realizing they had and download a virus which can log your ever keystroke. As you can imagine this would case a huge risk to you and your families PII. Always supervise an online session with children and teach them the safe way to “surf the web”.

Keep your PII to yourself please :-)