Security in the Digital World: For the Home User, Parent, Consumer and Home Office PDF

INTRODUCTION

When you lock your home at night you feel secure, confident that no attacker can get into your home without being detected. When you connect to the Internet that changes, you are creating a path for attackers to get into your home, your safe place, your sanctuary.

This book started as a project to help family and friends navigate the Internet safely and have some control of their digital presence. As an information and cyber security professional I continually support international companies in preventing attacks and managing incidents, but I am also very conscious that there is no single resource for the public.

As my personal project developed it was suggested there was too much helpful guidance and advice to not share outside the family. It is my hope that this book helps everyone prevent an attack or manage their online presence; if it does that for just one person then I will be very happy.

It is not my mission to change the world, but I would like to empower everybody to understand the threats and develop the culture to manage their digital presence.

The main caveat is that the information in this book is as good as the day it is written. Since that day there will have been new attacks and also possibly some changes to the actions you need to perform on your devices to be safer online.

Technology and threats are ever-evolving, use the information in this book as a baseline, then stay on top of updates, patches and safety settings to manage the risk of becoming a victim of an attack, or having your information used against you.

This book does not suggest companies are irresponsible, failing to protect their customers, or keeping their customers oblivious to the risks and threats to technologies, such as contactless cards. As a user I see various notices and warnings that businesses provide, but I am conscious that there is no single resource that explains how, why and what to do about them, which is what I have tried to create.

There are three things an attack needs: a means, a method and a motive. The means is the Internet or your device, the method is generally social engineering or malware, and the motive is your personal, financial or even work information.

I will go through who may be launching these attacks, as well as why, where and how.

I will also cover some things you can do to your device, the way you do things online, how you use technology and how you conduct yourself – all to protect yourself.

Unless you want to lock yourself away from society at large there is no gold-plated solution to staying safe, but lots of little things will combine into a better security posture and approach, a security blanket in effect that will cover you and give you some protection, that will hopefully help you be more aware and stay safe.

Safe surfing!