How to Safeguard Our Personal and FInancial Data?

Introduction

Nowadays, identity theft and unauthorized access to personal and financial data becoming a serious problem since interest has been widely used. This is because internet is easier for theives to obtain personal and financial data especially in online banking. Hackers may have unauthorized access to customer database to steal their confidential information. However, even if you never use computer, your personal information such as credit card numbers, account numbers and address may be stolen by someone. Therefore, unauthorized access to personal and financial data is the most important area that draw companies' attention. So, it is neccessary to safeguard our personal and financial data properly.

Ways to safeguard our personal and financial data

There are several ways to safeguard our personal data. First, use and maintain firewall. Firewall is used to block unauthorized access to personal data. All message passed through firewall to examine the message and block those unauthorized internet users. Firewall is integrated into operating system but if you are using older computer, you have to install firewall.

Second, install and update antispyware and antivirus programs. Antivirus programs are the software that used to prevent and remove computer viruses, worms and trojan horses. It can detect and remove adware and spyware. Example of antovirus software are Norton Antivirus, Symantic and AVG. Microsoft and other applications allow user to update antispyware programs. For those who want to save costs, Alwil Avast allow for free virus protection. It is important for us to ensure that our virus definition are up to date.

Third, use passwords and encrypt sensitive files. By using password protection, we use secret words for authentication to gain access to particular resource. Another method is encrypting files to ensure unauthorize access to personal data. However, the drawbacks of file encryption is that we must remember passwords because we may lose our data if we forgot our passwords.

Fourth, avoid accessing financial information in public. We must avoid checking our financial information such as bank balance in public. For example, many people like to access to internet in coffee shops which offer wireless connection Although these systems are convenient, users may not know how strong is their firewall.

Fifth, do not open mystery attachments. We should not open an attachment or link that is sent by an unknown party. This is because these attachments may contain viruses or allow hackers to steal our information.

Lastly, regularly scan your computer for spyware. To protect our financial data, it is necessary for us to regularly scan our computer because spyware or adware may be hidden insoftware programs that can allow hackers to access our data. By scanning our computer, it can detect and remove them.