Data Protection

Data Protection: Advanced Technology to Protect Your Privacy

ByJack

Many laws exist worldwide to protect our data from accidental sharing or theft, particularly in the healthcare sector, where organization must be HIPAA compliant to protect patients’ personally identifiable information. But it’s not only institutions that must protect us. In our digital age, we need to take steps to protect our privacy, too.

Data helps us get through modern life. This data includes our names, addresses, social security numbers, contact details, account details, gender, marital status, religious beliefs, and much more. Criminals can use some of this data to impersonate us to commit crimes or make unauthorized transactions. Or they can steal sensitive data to hold people to ransom for its safe return. Unscrupulous marketers use stolen data to sell products and services indiscriminately. 

Fortunately, we can use advanced technologies to help protect our data. The primary technology types we can use to protect the privacy of our data are as follows:

  1. Reverse phone lookups
  2. VPN
  3. HTTPS encryption protocol
  4. Other forms of encryption
  5. Antimalware and antivirus software
  6. Antispyware

Let’s look at each of these technologies in a little more detail.

  1. Reverse Phone Lookups

A call from an unknown number could be a scammer posing as an authority to gain personal information. Or it could be a marketer who has purchased a list of contact details on which the receiver was included. To reduce the risk of being scammed or hassled, we can investigate the number using a reverse phone lookup site rather than answering.

PhoneHistory is one of the most user-friendly reverse phone lookup sites around. After punching a number into the search box, the site will tell you:

  • the name of the owner;
  • their location;
  • how long they’ve had the number;
  • the history of how that number has been used, and more.

With a massive database of more than 500 million cells and landlines, you are likely to get the caller information you are looking for to keep your data safe.

  1. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

Criminals use VPNs to conceal their identities and locations when committing fraud and other crimes online. You can benefit from VPN software, too, to protect your identity from hackers and other cybercriminals.

Every device has a unique identifier (a MAC address), as does every connection on a network (an internet protocol or IP address). A VPN, such as NordVPN or Surfshark, hides these details and thus covers your tracks online, making it more difficult for cybercriminals to target you or intercept the data you transmit. A VPN can also prevent marketers from tracking you to attempt to sell you products and services with targeted communications.

Using a VPN can also help protect you from spear phishing attacks, where a criminal persistently targets an individual to get their personally identifiable information or access credentials. If you are in a position where you have privileged access to data, such as an administrator for a healthcare establishment or an educational institution, a VPN can offer another significant layer of data protection.

  1. Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS)

If you’re making a financial transfer or sending a confidential message online, ensure your transmission method is encrypted. Encryption means the data is encoded before sending and decoded at the receiving end. Anyone successfully intercepting the data in transit will be unable to interpret it. 

There are two easy ways to know if the site is encrypted. The first is that the URL will begin with HTTPS. The S stands for secure. The second way to tell your transmission is encrypted is the appearance of a closed padlock icon in the address bar.

  1. Encryption

Besides HTTPS, there are other forms of encryption that can help you keep your data private. You can purchase encrypted USB drives, so only someone with the keys can access the data. This can be useful in case of theft or accidental loss, which is how many personal records are accessed by people without authority. 

It’s vital to ensure that any cloud storage solutions you use are encrypted. Cybercriminals target cloud services because they have access to so much data. Research whether your third-party cloud services provider has policies and procedures to protect client data.

  1. Antimalware software

Installing and maintaining antimalware software such as McAfee on your devices is among the best things you can do to protect your data. Antimalware software typically covers all that antivirus software does. Malware includes trojans, worms, viruses, and more; any kind of harmful code that can harm your device and allow a hacker to access, steal, or modify your data.

Hackers continually develop new malware. Antimalware software developers release frequent updates to protect their clients from the latest threats. So it’s critical to run antimalware software frequently and, what is more, install updates to protect your devices and data. The updates allow a program to react rapidly and effectively when the malware is revealed.

  1. Antispyware

Spyware is a particularly pernicious form of malware that deserves its own section. Not all cyberattacks are like bombs being detonated. Spyware can sit on a computer for weeks, months, or years without the user knowing, allowing a hacker to access programs and data, and gain confidential information, including the keys you press when you enter passwords.  

Spyware can be subtle yet devastating. Running an anti-spyware application, such as Spyware Detector Anti Spyware Scanner, or an antimalware package that includes anti spyware is essential to protect your data privacy.

Conclusion

Using more data necessitates using advanced technology to protect it. Fortunately, understanding how cybercriminals think and who they target can help us keep our data safe. And then it’s a matter of employing some excellent available technology to keep criminals at bay.

Any of the six advanced technologies outlined earlier can help you reduce the risk of having data stolen or otherwise compromised. Using all six technologies simultaneously can offer excellent protection for an individual or a business. It’s wise to use multiple tools and remain vigilant to make the most of the internet without putting ourselves and our loved ones at additional risk.

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