Why Should You Bother with Information Security? Isn’t Everything Hackable Anyway?
Thursday, June 1st, 2017With the ever-increasing flow of large-scale hacks, many seem resigned to the fact that its only a matter of time before they get hit too. Security and its challenges have fully penetrated mainstream thought. Everyone knows that the CIA, the FBI, Russia, and even the hacker next door can break into your computer or phone, hijack your router, intercept your traffic, and take over your life.
In response, there has been a huge cry for better training, more secure software, secure email and secure texting. Basically, security everywhere. But if the hackers and agencies are really this powerful, why should you bother?
Are security services and products worth anything these days? Do they actually provide any protection? Or are they the emperor’s new bullet-proof-vest? It is surprising how many people have come to accept a complete lack of security. Some seem to use this as an excuse to avoid technologies that could benefit both their personal and business lives.
A great example comes from a dentist who was interested in sending notices to his patients via text, but resigned himself to “not bothering” as there is “no way to secure these things, anyway.” While that may be true in an absolute sense, it is not true practically.
In this article we will examine the reasons why we should bother with security and how it can help us in our personal and business lives.
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Many websites have “contact us” pages and include web forms for receiving requests from existing or potential customers. This includes “new patient intake” forms on healthcare providers’ websites. However, if you aren’t using a secure form solution, your web forms may suffer from several serious problems:
Everyone always harps on the necessity of privacy when discussing health care, government, and banking communications. It is surprising how little attention is paid to email security with regards to accounting and tax preparation. There is a real danger of identity theft, unintended information disclosure, as well as invasion of privacy when using tax preparation services or organizations that do not use secure email. Why is this? 
In previous posts we have examined how hackers and spammers can send forged email and how it can be extremely difficult to differentiate these messages from legitimate messages. We have looked at the various common techniques for anti-fraud such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and seen that, while these technologies can help a lot, they all have limitations; they all require strict and proper setup by the owner of the purported sender’s domain, and they must be well supported by your own spam filtering system.
