Today we would like to touch on a topic that affects us all, whether we are frequent computer users or not. It’s about cyber security – what is it and why is it so important?
Imagine you have a piggy bank with savings in your room. You would want no one to enter your room and steal your money, right? The same goes for our data in the Internet world. Our data, such as passwords, credit card numbers and family photos, are valuable. Cyber security helps protect this data from people who want to steal it, destroy it, or use it for nefarious purposes.
The same is true for our online security. The problem is that this issue is forgotten in schools or courses for ordinary users. How do we know about it? We will answer this question with a question. Have we been taught this in schools, at work, or anywhere outside of dedicated courses?
That’s why I will try to explain everything to you in a relatively simple way 😁.
You may not realize it, but you are surrounded by IT and “cyber” issues.
Yes, it’s all connected by cyber security. You will probably say:
“But it doesn’t apply to me…. I’m sitting under a rock, I don’t have a computer or a phone, and I’m not threatened by anything…”.
Yeah…. And eating fast food is 100% healthy…..
Let us show you sample scenarios of what could happen if no one bothered with cyber security.
Imagine you have a bank account and use a banking app. You wake up one day, go to check your mailbox and find a letter from the bank stating that you have 500,000 $ to give away. You log into the app quickly and find that you have no money in your account. You call the branch to explain what’s going on. However, you hear that a loan has been taken out on your information, which you have to pay back over the next few years, and that the money you kept in your account has been sent to a foreign account in India….
Imagine another scenario.You walk into a store as you do every day, but are stopped by a not-so-well-dressed gentleman whom the entire neighborhood knows. We both know who he’s talking about 🙃.He asks you for a few zlotys, but you don’t want to give it to him because you’re saving up for something. However, our esteemed Mr. Mietek (random name 😁) pulls out his phone, checks something in it for 30 seconds and tells you that you still have money in your account.Yesterday you made a transfer for rent in the amount of 1595.89 $ to an account numbered such and such. You have 700 $ left, so you still have funds in your account. It shows you on the maps on your phone that there is an ATM of your bank around the corner, so you can withdraw 10 $ to it.
Let’s consider that we are in Wroclaw (a city randomly chosen) and you want to go to college by streetcar. You see that the information boards show some Chinese stamps instead of arrival time. You try to check on your phone when the awaited transport will arrive, however, the app shows that the streetcar goes from Wroclaw to Berlin???? Well, let’s check on the paper schedule at the stop. You see that it was supposed to arrive 2 minutes ago, but there should be another one soon. Having a moment of time you decide to buy a ticket at the ticket machine, but everything is written in French???? You somehow manage to choose a ticket, but the price is 70,000 $????
O! Something is comming. It’s a streetcar that shouldn’t be at this stop at all, and it’s not listed on the schedule 🚊????
You go to the doctor because you don’t feel very well 🤕. You get a sick leave for 2 weeks, which is issued digitally. In addition, you have an e-prescription that you want to fill at a nearby pharmacy. You leave the doctor’s office and your friends on Facebook write to you wishing you well. You get hundreds of notifications from social media “Experts” telling you that what your doctor prescribed is outdated and advising you to take other drugs without a prescription. You pour over it and go to the pharmacy. The kindly pharmacist states that she can’t give you the drugs because they have already been picked up in a town 300 kilometers away from you….
You wake up and go to work. The day seems like any other, but you notice that the employees are looking at you strangely. You don’t know what they mean. You hear from the secretary that you should go immediately to your boss. You enter his room and hear thousands of claims about what you allegedly wrote about their company on social media. You explain that you don’t know anything about it and you don’t have social media accounts. However, the boss shows you screenshots that the accounts from these portals are linked to your email address, which you provided on your resume, but which you forgot existed. The boss threatens you with a criminal case for defaming the company and getting fired 😭.
You come home after work and see an unknown phone number calling you. You hear that your mother has been in an accident and is in the hospital. The injuries are so serious that the usual insurance doesn’t cover them, so you have to pay an additional 10,000 $ on the bill that was sent in the email. The message looks authentic. You ask yourself, which hospital are they calling from? Due to the critical situation of the patient, she was transported to a city 350 kilometers away from you.
You don’t believe what you’re hearing, so you call your mother, but she doesn’t answer. You quickly call all your friends and try to arrange money. You borrow a total of 3,000 $ from them, but you couldn’t raise the full amount, so you take a quick loan from the bank. You send the money and call back. The nice receptionist asks you to send the transaction confirmation to a different email address than the one you got the message from.
You send the transaction confirmation. Thoughts race through your head. Who was your mother with, how did the accident happen, what did the doctor mean when she said that the injuries were so serious that they were not covered by insurance? Will your mother recover from this?
After a while you hear the phone ringing again. It’s your mom, who says she was asleep and had her phone muted….
You’re probably thinking after reading this article that we’re exaggerating and exaggerating too much. Maybe so … or maybe not. What we’ve presented to you here is just a piece of what would happen if we didn’t take cyber security seriously in our daily lives.
It doesn’t matter if you have a Nokia 3310 (an indestructible tool forged in the darkest depths of Orodruin), or if you don’t have electricity at all and you send your mail by carrier pigeon. Cyber security is everywhere, but we don’t realize it on a daily basis.
In our other posts, you’ll learn how to increase your security level and protect yourself from online threats and more.
