How to safeguard our personal and financial data...

Computer and network security attacks are on the rise. Data collected by the computer security institute (CSI), the FBI, and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) indicate that the number of security incidents has skyrocketed since 1998, that the overwhelming majority of firms have experienced computer security breaches from inside and outside the organisation, that the financial losses from these breaches have been substantial, and that it takes a concerted effort to guard against cyber attack. So we have to know how to safeguard our financial and personal data.

First, we need to concern with a variety of security issues:
1) Authorization – The process that ensures that person has the right to access certain recourses.
2) Auditing – The process of collecting information about attempts to access particular resources, use particular privileges, or perform other security actions.
3) Confidentiality – Keeping private or sensitive information from being disclosed to unauthorized individuals, entities, or processes.
4) Integrity – As applied to data, the ability to protect data from being altered or destroyed in an unauthorized or accidental manner.
5) Nonrepudiation – The ability to limit parties from refuting that a legitimate transaction took place, usually by means of a signature.

Several technologies exist that ensure that an organisation’s network boundaries are secure from cyber attack or intrusion and that if the organisation’s boundaries are compromised that the intrusion is detected:
1) Firewall – A network node consisting of both hardware and software that isolates a private network from a public network. Firewall that filter data and requests moving from the public Internet to a private network based on the network addresses of the computer sending or receiving the request. These firewall called Packet-filtering Routers.
2) Personal firewall – A network node designed to protect an individual user’s desktop system from the public network by monitoring all the traffic that passes through the computer’s network interface card.
3) Virtual Private Network – A network that uses the public internet to carry information but remains private by using encryption to scramble the communication, authentication to ensure that information has not been tampered with, and access control to verify the identity of anyone using the network.
4) Intrusion detection systems – A special category of software that can monitor activity across a network or on a host computer, watch for suspicious activity, and take automated action based on what it sees.