Keeping your personal information safe is a reality that everyone is faced with. This is a reality not only in personal lives, but in today’s business as well. Security authentication is a process that was created to keep our anonymity and information disclosed when using the internet, whether at home or at a business. Many are faced with not knowing how to really secure their information properly or simply do not use know how to use them. Data security is constantly being breached in technology, but can be resolved with being updated and smarter about what we, the public, disclose.
Security authentication process is the verification of the identity of any person or entity. This is also to determine whether someone or something is, who or what they declare themselves to be. The safety aspect of one’s security is to have complete anonymity and not having it exposed to the public. Authentication is a major part of all online applications and essentially verifies a user’s claimed identity. This is necessary to identify and authenticate one’s self to the application to get access. The standard popular form of authentication is through the use of passwords. This authorization declares what a user can see and do within the application. The accounting process has the ability to keep track of all users’ actions pertaining to the program within that time. Since the growth of internet usage and online applications being accessible worldwide, simplicity and ability to logon have become easier for all. This has also caught the attention by the criminal element. The effortlessness of the HTTP protocol makes it simple to steal and spoof others identities. The security of any application is unfortunately limited to either having a higher level of security of more usability within the application. If more security is added to an application such as: multiple authentication questions, pass phrases instead of answers to questions, pattern codes, the lower the acceptance rate and usability will decrease amongst its users. The biggest challenge is having a high secure authentication system accepted by all users. With necessary use of smartphones, tablets, cloud based systems and infrastructures, the potential use of sensitive data and intellectual property is accessible to all. Organizations have protected their systems and data using traditional identity and access management (IAM) techniques. This technique, however, is no longer sufficient due to evolving threat landscapes and changes in data protection regulations. “At a global electronics and media company, hackers gained access to more than 100 million records, including 12 million unencrypted credit card numbers. The breach also included customer purchase histories, billing addresses and password questions. At a health care services company, a computer containing 3.3 million patients’ medical details, including their names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and health insurance plan information, was stolen. At a government department, the names, addresses and Social Security numbers—and, in some cases, the driver’s licenses and dates of birth—of 3.5 million citizens were inadvertently left on a “publicly accessible” server for more than a year, “. Data security should be an important factor to all who use the internet whether on your personal cellphone or through a business. Some basic steps should become habit and can prevent serious threatened attacks to all involved. Establishing a good strong password for all applications can strengthen your security. However, it is wise to avoid using any personal data, common words spelled back words or sequences of characters or numbers that are close together. A strong firewall is also highly advised. A firewall protects your network by controlling internet traffic coming into and flowing out of your business. Installing an antivirus and antimalware software can defend your system from an unwanted attack through your network. Updating all programs regularly is essential to make sure your computer is running properly and updated. It also keeps you up to date on any recent issues or holes that programmers have fixed since last updated. Since laptops and phones are also portable and at a higher risk of being lost or stolen than desktops, having an encrypted password is crucial to not be open or read. Also keeping these under lock and key at all times due to their easily hidden nature. Cell phones should also have password protection enabling a “lock out” period, where after a short amount of time not being used, the phone locks itself. Remote wiping enables a phones history to be completely wiped out and losing any pertinent information from the phone. Backing up through an external hard drive or cloud is also another way to keep all date stored safely. Complete backups should be done weekly and incremental backups should be done every night. This simply depends on much you use your data and what is entered during a certain amount of time. Monitoring diligently through a data leakage prevention software is also key for information coming out of your internal network. It can be configured to look for credit card numbers, pieces of code or any information relevant to your business that would indicate a breech. Overall, being careful with all emails, instant messages, and surfing the web. Links are the reason malware ends up in computers. Never click on a link that you weren’t expecting if you don’t know the origination of an email or instant message.

In closing, everyone today is using the internet. Life has become virtually impossible to not use a laptop or cell phone for our everyday duties. Our employment, banking and schooling is all done via the internet. However, due to the criminal activity of identity theft and credit card fraud, we are liable of what information we enter and expose it to. We, the public, need to better monitor who has access to our personal information. Although hackers will always continue to attempt to stay steps ahead of the information technology police, it is up to us to constantly change our password, think twice about pictures we take, buy things with a credit card or logon on to sociable websites. Safety starts within the home and values we may have.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc758422(v=ws.10).aspx http://deloitte.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2013/11/18/protecting-data-with-advanced-risk-based-authentication-techniques/ http://www.businessinsider.com/10-essential-data-security-measures-every-business-should-take-2010-6?op=1