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Smart Phone, Smart Watch, Smart Pay, Smart?

Smart Phone, Smart Watch, Smart Pay, Smart?

How safe is smart?

The idea of never needing to carry cash or debit cards looks pretty appealing, right? Never worry about someone trying to steal your traditional wallet and hard-earned cash bills. Or maybe someone attempts to jack your favorite sports watch in favor of a Rolex on the person next to you.

The idea of everything “smart” only means that we are trading in what we perceive as “unsafe or at risk’ by carrying some cash with us or maybe even wearing an expensive watch.

Smart devices are capable of accessing far more than a few dollars in our wallets left over from the last payday.

How safe is it to move to “smart” everything, especially with ransomware, account takeover, and denial-of-service attacks against financial and healthcare systems? Even with credit card companies adding layers of protection to the cards and devices, is the intelligent method of contactless payment cards safe?

Yes, you are carrying less in your wallet and purse. If someone steals your wallet or bag, your life does not come to a screeching halt. Losing an intelligent device is far-reaching implications.

With intelligent devices that grant us the ability to “smart” pay at the checkout and execute peer-to-peer payments along with a simple scan and pin, you can purchase pretty much everything.

Yes, there is electronic pickpocketing in Paris.

Once I rode the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. News reports and signs hung everywhere, “beware of pickpockets.” In the men’s bathroom, someone attempted to steal my wallet in my front pocket. Impressive, yes; however, most of my real stuff sat in a secured compartment inside my pants. Now, for a moment, is it possible I could be a victim of “digitally pickpocketing?” Of Course!

Being digitally pickpocketed is possible with an RFID scanner. Many credit cards have placed encryption protection and smart chips on cards to help stop someone from skimming your credit cards.

What else do you have on your smart device worthy of being stolen by a digital pickpocketer? Banking applications, financial services applications, healthcare portal applications, and Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin. Do you have the proper security features available on your smart device to protect your data?

Preserving your smartphone, watching, and ensuring multi-factor authentication on every high-risk application helps protect your device. Backing up your phone to the cloud is a smart idea. If your smart device gets stolen and the hacker attempts to reset it back to factory default, you can set your phone to auto-wipe all data. Once you notify your carrier, you can acquire a new one to restore your data.

Going on in on “smart?” Sure, once digital currency and electronic payment are the game in town, we will all depend on the network’s security to protect everything we own. “Oh boy”

Until then, I will always carry a few dollars and a shielded ATM card in my wallet, just to be “smart.”

All the best,

John

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Stories by John P. Gormally, SR on Medium authored by John P. Gormally, SR. Read the original post at: https://jpgormally.medium.com/smart-phone-smart-watch-smart-pay-smart-32d075065bcb?source=rss-160023698d42------2