Hackers don’t hack your system; they hack your minds!

Pune International Literary Festival (PILF) held on 8^th September 2017 at Yashada, witnessed the congregation of numerous intellectual authors as well as speakers who shared their words of wisdom to nurture curious minds. The objective of the festival is to engage, explore and experiment with literature.

Vaishali Bhagwat, an Advocate by profession expressed her piece of mind through workshop on “Protecting yourself from Cyber menace”. She emphasized on the fact that people tend to believe cyber threats are a recent phenomenon; which isn’t true. Audience have this psychology that it wouldn’t affect them so they generally chose to ignore it as a result they are ignorant of its consequences.

Technology has altered the way we interact with cyber space. The speaker shared a few unusual incidents which can make anyone flabbergast! She mentioned about a lady who transferred about 45 Lakhs in the account of a person who promised to marry her on a matrimonial site. Another reference was about “Flame” which is a malicious programme that is used as a cyber-weapon to record basically everything from conversation, photographs to encrypted messages, having full control of what we are doing on our computer; thus bringing them to third party attackers. She also highlighted other virus attacks such as the Love Bug, Wanna cry, Ransomware etc.

Furthermore, discussing about the ills on cyber space she added; 70% of LinkedIn profiles are fake, Debit card cloning, circulation of fake WhatsApp message etc. She believes that these are bad hygiene and one must always have a tilt for crosschecking news from authentic sources before believing rumours.

“Unless our society recognizes cyber bullying for what it is, the suffering of thousands of silent victims will continue.” – Anna Maria Chavez.

Miss Bhagwat propounded few preventive tips to maintain security from such cyber-attacks. She insisted on not opening emails from an unknown sender particularly if there’s an attachment. For instance an email with a subject I love you will invoke a sense of curiosity and perhaps we would open the mail; this can be dangerous. Malicious mails can also come from senders that might look familiar such as claiming to be from Bank or Income Tax Department. Another very interesting thing to take into consideration is that, https. is the secured site for payment of any online transactions not htpp. Always keep the former in preference.

Turn off features that make programmes run automatically and remove software’s that you don’t use these are the breeding grounds for attackers. Always be alert about what apps you have, remove accounts that aren’t useful, through this most of the problem will be solved. Keeping check on people, process and technology one can have a 360° approach to protect business. Keeping your computer clean, uncluttered and by using licenced software we can prevent 95% of the risks.

Hackers don’t hack your system; hackers hack your mind. While referring about the Nuclear plant affected in Iran from small virus, she put forward her perspective that  It’s very easy to bypass a human mind, Hackers don’t even bother about technology, they are aware of the fact that Humans are the weakest link in the entire ecosystem.

If one isn’t diligent, all the investment goes down in drain. In an hour discussion related to cyber space she did complete justice in touching various topics and interesting data with the audience. Moreover, she urged people to not shy away from any sort of humiliating or harassing messages and to report these incidents to the cyber cell. It’s high time that we create awareness about this untouched issue so as to prevent others from being trapped in a vicious circle. Surf Safe!