how to safeguard personal and financial data(week 4)

Every business should develop a written information security plan that describes its program to protect individuals’ personal information. Every business has the flexibility to implement policies, procedures, and technologies that are appropriate to their unique circumstances.
Even companies take every step to secure our financial and personal data but still can let people hack our computer to violate personal information.

Several steps to secure our personal information data:

1) Protect your passwords and pins- do not share our passwords and pins with each others. We also should not store our passwords and pins on our own computer. If we need to write down our own passwords and pins after that need to store in a secure private place. The perfect passwords and pins should contain letter and symbol. Passwords and pins should change regularly and different passwords and pins in each accounts.

2) Maintain our own computer security- personal firewalls and security software packages with anti-virus, anti-spam and spyware detection features are must for those who engage in online financial transaction. Users must have up-to-date security software, including security patches, that the software is configured for automatic updates, and that the software must always turned on.


3) Use our own computer- avoid using public computers to access our personal accounts. Those places are cyber café, lab and friend’ computer. Why we cannot use our own personal account? This is because public computers may contain software that captures passwords and pins.

4) Log out completely- this step cannot miss must do it every time. Always click the “log out” button when we want close the firm’s web site. If we accidentally miss out this step, other users of the computer might be able to re-enter the site and access you personal account.

5) Check for secure web site-must ensure web site we log in is a secure web site. Secure web site address must starts with “http”. For example, in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, look for the address bar turn to green color to identify of the site you are visiting is secure.

If we think our personal information has been stolen by other people, immediately contact your brokerage firm and financial institutions.

Reference:
http://www.finra.org/Investors/ProtectYourself/InvestorAlerts/FraudsAndScams/P037886