Personal Data Protection and Privacy
From Computing and Software Wiki
Personal data are a set of data such as name, social insurance number, birthday dates, credit card number etc that needs to be kept secure. These data can be stolen if a computer is connected to the internet and the information is on the computer. A lot of hackers on the internet use their computer or other people’s computer to gain access into your computer to steal personal information that they then use for their malicious purposes. These hackers have free access to a computer when there is a security hole in the software or operating systems that are being used on your computer.
Contents |
Recognizing threats to Personal Data
Privacy Law governing release of Personal Data
How to Protect Personal Data
Using Firewalls
A firewall is a collection of security measured designed to prevent unauthorized access to a networked computer. It blocks all internet traffic that has not being specifically specified by the computer from coming to the computer. There are two types of firewalls that can be used depending on the computer that needs to be secured.
Hardware Firewall
This is a device that allows the connection of different computers to a hub. The firewall then monitors request that are coming from the internet into the computers connected to the hub. This type of firewall protection is mainly used by organizations that needs to control the information that is being sent to out of their organization and information received from other sites.
Personal Firewall
A personal firewall is software installed on each computer that needs to be protected. A personal firewall has more feature than a hardware firewall but cannot be shared with different computers.
Email Authentication
Emails are received from financial institutions, Internet service Providers and other organizations requesting for personal information. This information should not be released through email without authenticating the source of the email. The most secure method of doing this calling the organization and ensuring that they are require this information.
Providing Personal Data on the web
When providing personal information or data on the internet, ensure that the web site is authentic. A good way of checking ensuring that the web site is authentic is by typing in the web address manually.
