Evy Poumpouras is a former Secret Service Agent and colleague, as well as a co-host on Bravo TV’s series Spy Games, author of Becoming Bulletproof, and national media contributor who covers national security, law enforcement and crime. This excerpt from her recent interview with me is timely and reflects the most pressing issues facing you today.
Where are we vulnerable and how do we defend ourselves?
For the most part, criminals are looking for personal data they can use with minimal effort to gain access to funds and move them quickly to be able to conduct cash-out activities and disappear. The most important defense mechanism against cybercrimes is taking advantage of strong authentication in every channel you use. The leading cause of cyber driven scams is account takeover, password theft, and impersonation.
TIP: Turn on multi-factor authentication for all your accounts, including email.
Online gaming has become a huge target these days because many of them require payments to play or buy upgrades Early on there weren’t many protections around this, but more recently gaming platforms have added parental control features and levels of authentication.
TIP: Parents, make sure to set parental controls for your kids’ online gaming.
Personal computers should have some level of malware protection installed. Most anti-malware tools update themselves automatically and will catch a bad attachment or malicious website and block them.
TIP: Don’t open emails or links that you do not recognize or seem suspicious, even it’s from someone you trust. Email accounts get hacked all the time.
Read the full interview here.