These days we have a password for everything. We click on an email when we forget, we reset and off we go again. But where does all this information go?

“I’d say most people make choices that are bad from a security perspective,” says Dr Hugh Thompson, a world renowned specialist in information security.

And, he says it’s harder than ever to keep our data safe, given the amount of information being broadcast and the type of people watching.

“Think about things like password reset. Almost always it’s questions about your past like ‘Where did you grow up? What’s your favourite pet?’

“Ten years ago, who’d know that? Your best friend or your cousin? Today, almost anybody can find that information out in minutes,” he says in an interview with Adam Spencer.

Dr Thompson is uniquely aware of how hackers operate, having himself been employed to hack in and test computer systems.

“A lot of its done through trickery”, he says.

“They’ll look on something like Linkedin, figure out who all the employees are, what they had for breakfast and craft an email or even a phone call that sounds so convincing that they’re from the IT department and ask you to give your credentials to be able to get in.”

Dr Thompson suggests there is one thing we can all do to improve our own personal security – think of the motives of the people watching.

“Every time you post something online, think that the person who might be reading this might want to cause you harm or your company harm. If you just kept that one thing in mind, I think it would completely change your behaviour,” he says.

Despite his warnings, Dr Thompson believes there are more good guys than bad guys out there.

“A lot of them are hobbyists, so they learn about a technique and they get inspired and they think, ‘this will be interesting’.”

Source: ABC.net

Author: Lyndall Bell