RIAAN BADENHORST Our devices are increasingly intrinsic parts of our daily and personal lives, but are, thus, high-value targets for cybercriminals
Consumers must be aware of the risks posed by digital identity theft and must adhere to Internet use best practices, use different passwords for different accounts and protect their information by being aware of their digital footprints, including on multiple devices that they use, says Kaspersky Lab Africa MD Riaan Badenhorst.
Mobile devices are increasingly at risk as their use and the personal information contained on them increase. This makes them a high-value target for cybercriminals, as a breach can afford them access to multiple digital identities of a person.
“Individuals have multiple digital identities, such as on various social media, as well as online retail and financial services identities. “Defence of these identities requires vigilance and awareness of the risks, especially as many private and public services can now be accessed through the use of these identities, representing significant financial and personal risks,” he explains.
While user-awareness and defence of digital identities is necessary, including actively updating device firmware and software regularly, technology is also required to close various hardware and software related vulnerabilities of devices, browsers and applications (apps), he notes.
“Our devices are increasingly intrinsic parts of our daily and personal lives, but there are significant vulnerabilities inherent in the sites, apps and devices that users must be aware of to mitigate.”
“For example, a personal email account is often used to verify several of our digital identities and often contains sensitive personal and financial information. “This means that if a cybercriminal can access our email account, he or she can potentially access various digital identities and financial services, which makes the email account strategically significant and critical to defend.”
Further, many users trust the security of their devices and anyone who can access the device will often have access to that user’s personal accounts. Thus, protection of these devices is critical, he emphasises.
Kaspersky Lab has released its Kaspersky Internet Security Multi-Device 2016, which enables users to have one licence to protect their privacy, data, identity and financial information on multiple personal devices.
The two retail versions of the product include licences to protect two or four devices, but the Kaspersky Lab website enables users to select up to ten devices to protect with a single licence.
“The multi-device protection product is designed to protect what matters most to users: their privacy and identity, data, money, as well as the device itself. “The product enables a single user to protect his or her devices or for a family to use a single licence to protect up to ten of their devices. The licence holder can also manage the security of the devices protected by the product and view status of protection using the My Kaspersky portal.
“Further, the Kaspersky Lab Safe Money feature protects users’ financial information by verifying the security certificates of the websites visited, either online retail or online financial services, in addition to secure hypertext transfer protocol.”
Change Control and Private Browsing are additional features of the 2016 version. Change Control protects users from any attempts to change their browser home page, alter the default search engine, install extra plug-ins or modify network system configurations without their consent. Private Browsing removes data from the Internet traffic and reports any blocked requests to the user through a dedicated plugin (which is available for Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome).
Kaspersky Lab’s browser tools not only prevent users from being identified from cookie files or warn sites that it does not wish to transmit data that could track users, but prevents this data from leaving the device.
The multi-device protection product analyses processes running on the devices to identify risky or malicious processes, including apps that try to invoke personal functions or elements of the device, such as contacts or the camera.
“Kaspersky Lab has also improved its Web-camera protection functionality for computers, as polls indicate that few users trust their Web-cameras. “The multi-device protection product, thus, aims to provide holistic protection of a user’s identities and devices through the latest cybersecurity protection and best practices, but must be used in conjunction with user vigilance and awareness,” he concludes.