Given today’s report from consumer watchdog which highlighting the UK’s fraud hotspots (full coverage on BBC News) that have been most prominently hit bycomputer viruses, malware and spyware; fraud; online retail fraud; and social media hacking, Peter Carlisle, VP of EMEA at Thales e-Security commented below in response to this story.
Peter Carlisle, VP of EMEA at Thales e-Security:
“These findings from Which? highlight not only how rife incidents of fraud are across the country but also how many different types of fraud there actually are. From retail fraud to social media hacking, fraudsters will stop at nothing in their quest to obtain valuable personal information for malicious purposes.
“Today, the challenge for businesses across industries is that they are ensuring that they are taking the necessary steps to protect customer data – extending their encryption policies to cover all personally identifiable information and account data to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.
“For security professionals too the key challenge is the lack of consumer knowledge around what data they should ensure they are focussing on protecting. People are particularly careful with debit and credit card numbers but will regularly give up Personally Identifiable Information like date of birth and street address, and will often use the same password on multiple sites.
“Citizens must, therefore, ensure they show vigilance with their data, ensuring they rigorously verify the credentials of anyone they speak to on behalf of an organisation and that they vary their login details, especially passwords, across their accounts.”
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