Don’t click on email attachments. Don’t publish your date of birth or employment details on profile pages at Facebook and MySpace.
Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan reports that in recent months, banking clients have been warning her of a spike in fraud, much of it based on the use of stolen financial data. “There’s been a marked increase in the number of attacks and the number of successful fraud attempts,” says Litan, who plans to publish a formal report in December. “This is the busiest my practice has ever been.” Litan blames the attacks on the thousands of IT workers who have recently found themselves jobless, with the technical abilities needed to steal data or perpetrate fraud along with specific knowledge of their former employer’s IT systems. “In times like these, people need the cash,” she says. “You have disgruntled IT employees that leave companies, take customer records with them to sell them on the black market.” More
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