Thursday 8 August 2013

Hackers and USB Drives—The Biggest Threats to Data

Since the last decade or so, organizations and individuals are facing a big threat of data leakage. The cost and incidents of data breaches are increasing at a rapid pace. The world has witnessed a rise of more than 100 percent of such incidents in a span of just one year. These incidents are getting more and more expensive as the days are passing, other than the threat of fraud, there are costly fines imposed by the concerned government. The people who are using the computer as a basic working tool are always afraid of losing precious data. There are many mediums of leaking data, but, the two top channels are using data are hackers attack or losing portable data storing devices.

Hack attacks are considered as the costliest and common source of losing data. Hackers use different techniques to trap users and make use of their data against them. One of the most and tempting ways of making new victims is by sending an attractive email to hundreds and thousands of people. The subject of such emails is usually something like “You are the lucky winner” or “You have won prize money of $500,000,000”. These emails are so catchy that the majority of the users open them and read. Usually, the name of a famous multinational brand is used as the host of such lottery, they ask for the particulars such as name, address, cell number and etc.

This material is just written in the email to give that e-message a genuine look. However, the real game of the hackers revolves around the malware link. There is often a link given the mail which is likely to be asked to click, a click on that link opens up a safe passage for the 
cyber criminals to enter into the computer and dig out the desired information out of the computer. The email which is sent to the bulk of hundreds and thousands of the users, hackers hope that two or users will fall in their trap.

The other most common way of losing data is by getting the USB flash drive or any other portable data storing device lost or theft. That is why experts advise to keep a Secure USB . USB flash drive is the most commonly used portable drives because of its portability, affordability and amazing capacity of saving data. A USB drive can be as small as a human thumb, that is why, this external drive has several other names like thumb drive, pen drive, flash drive or jump drive. Where, its small size gives user the freedom to carry data with him/her, it is also the reason of data leakage.

Due to its small size, these drives are prone of getting lost or stolen. The majority of the user does not bother to use any kind of encryption to make their data secure in the USB drive. The interesting point is that, users are completely aware of the fact that there is always a threat of losing data, but, they still ignore them and keep the drive and the precious data without any security. This irresponsible act leads them to lost precious data when they lose their drive.

About Author
David Payne is an E-marketing specialist at New Softwares.net, An Information Security Company that specializes in developing award winning data security software which can Secure USB .

0 comments:

Post a Comment