You: The First, Last and Best Data Protection and Privacy Defense – Part 2

As part of this two-part series, let’s now look to another exhibit demonstrating of how people act as the first, last and best data and privacy defense.

Exhibit B: Potentially Unwanted Leaks

If you have some technical literacy, you may have heard of potentially unwanted programs (“PUPs”). It’s all that glop and gloop – malware, viruses, trojans, worms – that can cause havoc on your devices and systems. More often than not, PUPs end up on your system because of – you guessed it – the operator doing something silly. Clicked a link they shouldn’t have, opened up an attachment from an unknown sender, downloaded and installed sketchy app. You name it.

Here’s our advice for this type of basic operator fail: make sure your OS is patched and updated, make sure the signatures of your antivirus are up-to-date, make sure your firewalls aren’t a sieve, and if you are one of the lucky ones who has some AI at your disposal, make sure it picks up and where possible stops nasty traffic. If you are an everyday user, that’s about all you can do after you’ve done something you shouldn’t have.

That’s about all we have to say on PUP in here, except for this: it is the “potentially unwanted” phrase that catches our attention, as it captures the idea of non-linear costs. Because if something can be “potentially unwanted,” it also carries the potential to cause you problems if not immediately at some point in the future. In other words, costs that can be both unpredictable and incalculable. That’s why we identified something else that is potentially unwanted: leaks of information.

To clarify, we are not talking about the breaches you hear about in the news. What we are talking about are those tidbits of information – those (Read more...)