3rd Application of certification programme in Malaysia (week 4)

Third-party certification is a scientific process by which a product or service is reviewed by a reputable and unbiased third party to verify that a set of criteria, claims or standards are being met. Certification Authority (CA) is a trusted third party in a public key security system is responsible for vouchsafing the identity of users and issuing them with certificates that bind the public key to their identities.One of the certificate authorities in Malaysia is MSC Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd.

MSC Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd is a licensed certificate authorities in Malaysia which establish in 1999. Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd offer security solutions and leading trust services such as digital certification, digital signatures, encryption and decryption.

VeriSign is a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) services provide by Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd. This is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser to ensure all information remains private and integral. SSL is used by websites in the protection of their online transactions with their customers. To be able to create an SSL connection a web server requires an SSL Certificate. All SSL Certificates are issued to either companies or legally accountable individuals.

How safe is our privacy data?(week4)

With the advancement of technology today, we normally save our personal or private data in our hard drive. The main reason we keep this data in our hard drive is for us to easily retrive our data anytime, and whereever we need to However, there are also numerous of online threats attack your computer system, personal data and privacy anytime without your attention while u access the websites.Malicious attacks are cyber attacks that can be further broken down into attacks caused by malicious code. The most common form of malicious code is computer virus. It’s a computer program can replicate itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. The virus can easily spread by a user sending it over a network on the internet or by carrying it on a removable medium such as floppy disk, CD, USB drive. For example, the May 2000”I Love You” virus was a simple and small piece of code attached to e-mail which cause e-mail servers to overload and business to shut down email. It ever caused over $100milllion in US damages and over $1 billion in worldwide losses.

Spyware is any technology that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge. On the Internet, spyware is programming that is put in someone's computer to secretly gather information about the user and relay it to advertisers or other interested parties.A Trojan horse is a destructive program that can cause serious damage by deleting files and destroying information on your system.

Trojans are also known to create a back door on your computer that gives malicious users access to your system, possibly allowing confidential or personal information to be compromised. Trojans unlike virus or worms, they do not reproduce by infecting other files nor do they self-replicate

Nowadays, identity theft has become general. Identity theft is online fraud that unauthorized collection and use of personal information such as social security numbers, signature, name, address, phone number, credit card information, usually for criminal purposes. Internet provides a new way for people to steal your personal information.

Crackers using internet chat rooms and spreading Trojan horses that drop key loggers on your computer to transit any passwords, usernames and credit card numbers you use on your computer back to the crackers for example paypal password . Internet identity theft has made many people hesitant about making a purchase online or signing up for what others consider everyday occurrences such as creating PayPal account, purchasing from e-commerce sites, using internet banking and checking credit card statements online

The threat of online security: How safe is our data? (Week 4)

With the evolution of the Internet, e-commerce is very popular in the consumer behaviour. From the Internet, we can learn how to do the e-transaction and purchase from the net. Human tend to depend more on online convenience and along came another revolution of crime and security issue where some unethical users commit acts of crime on the World Wide Web. Every unprotected online computer can be affected with the viruses, malware, adware, hackers’ attacks and Trojans. There are several online security risks that can lead the users to serious monetary loss, information thievery and the attack on their computer.

The best way to overcome those problems is to use one of the many antivirus, antispyware, and firewall programs on the market; beside that also make that no anyone will ask for your password, account number, or other log-in information via e-mail or instant message. Beside this, to protect our data is safe we also can have an antivirus program to scan the entire computer for viruses. Even though most antivirus programs have an auto-protect feature that should, theoretically, prevent the insertion of a virus onto our computer, because it’s still a good idea to scan our computer periodically in the event the automatic protection feature missed something. Moreover, we can scan our computer once per week.

Furthermore, The solution for us how to protects our data for the online security, we need to uses the security issues to help us to protect our data, such as Authentication, Authorization, No repudiation, Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data (Week 4)

The way to safeguard the personal information and financial data is to establish appropriate standards for the financial institutions subject to the jurisdiction relating to administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to insure the security and confidentiality of user records and information as well as take reasonable precautions to protect data in the system from any anticipated threats or hazards to the security of such records and to protect against unauthorized access to or use of such records or information which could result in substantial harm or inconvenience to the user.

If you do shop, bank or do anything else online that require the user to disclose personal information, make sure that your system is up to date with patches that you are running anti virus software and that you have a firewall turned on.

Check your banking and credit card statement for any unauthorized activity. Besides, notify your banking institution if you see anything suspicious.

Limit the download of execution software onto your personal computer because it might contain spyware or Trojan which will penetrate the computer security and access to the user personal information.

Disclose only the information that is absolutely necessary, and never give out your Social Security number.

Read watch and listen to the news everyday. There’s nary a day that goes by that some data loss or theft isn’t reported. You can never let your guard down when it comes to your personal information, but you need to be especially vigilant when you hear about vulnerability that hits close to home.

If your personal data has been put in jeopardy, contact the credit reporting agencies and put a fraud alert on your account

If your personal data and financial data is already been intrude by hacker, the user should contact the credit card companies, and let them know that the data is at risk. As a result, the bank or credit card companies will put a fraud alert on your account, or, if the user thinks there’s a good chance of your data being abused, close your old accounts and open new ones.

The user should never ever open suspicious emails from unknown people, especially the attachments however tempting it may be. It will be hazardous to your computer. Sometimes you may even get emails with attachments with subject saying "Thank you for your order and the credit card details". Most of them will be sending malicious viruses through those attachments which will destroy your computer data and information.

Apart from that, the most common way is to protect your computer with antivirus soft ware and update it regularly. With the updates, the anti virus can assist you in detecting the virus, Trojan and spyware which will notify to the user.

In order to safeguard the personal data and information, backing up of all your important files and store them in two sets of floppies. In case one floppy fails to open the other one would be of help.

There are more and more ways to help safeguard and improve the security from being loss of data and information. I just pick some of the ways form the internet. If you interested, you can go on the web to surf it. Hope it might be helpful to those who reading this post.^^

Phishing_Examples and its prevention method (week 4)

In this information technology era, internet has provided us lots of benefit. In the same times, it also being abused or misused by other to conduct unethical or criminal activities such hackering, phishing and others. Nowadays,the threat of phishing has become quite common and tends to increase overtime and it is a threat to the internet user. Certain measurement has be conducted to overcome this problem.

Phishing is a social engineering attack which is criminally acquire sensitive information of others by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Normally, the information being acquire are usernames, account number, passwords, mother maiden name and credit card details and else. In other words, it is a technique used to gain or fool the user to disclosure their personal information for the purpose of identity theft.

There is a lot of ways phishing can be carried out such as fake e-mail or instant messaging or phone call from the phisher. No less than that, phisher even willing to create a fake legitimate website to deceive the users to disclosure their personal details to them. Normally, the fake legitimate website being targeted are PayPal, ebay and other online bank.

To combat with this phishing, there is many ways can be done such as educate and train the user awareness on phishing, better policies and procedures by legitimate company on their website, and use of spam filters which can reduce the number of phishing e-mails that reach their addressees' inboxes. Beside that, nowadays, web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 has been provide anti-phishing measurement to the web user.