CONVERSATIONS THAT MATTER
Conversations That Matter features Dominic Vogel, a cyber-security consultant who says big businesses are doing such a good job thwarting hackers they have turned their attention to small businesses.
“What’s happened is that smaller and mid-sized businesses are being hit really, really hard. In fact for last year, for 2015, over 40 per cent of all cyber attacks were focused on small and mid-sized businesses,” Vogel said.
Small businesses and a naive public are ripe for cyber attacks because neither pay enough attention to their online safety.
Vogel says most people don’t protect passwords properly or change them frequently enough, don’t install program updates, they use public Wi-Fi and make themselves targets of other threats.
“Hackers go where the money is, they focus their attention on the top five applications in use.”
According to Vogel, the No. 1 program under threat is email.
“The reason is most of your sensitive applications tie back to your email, like your online banking. If you need to reset your online banking, it generally will tie back to your email.
“Your email is sort of like your heart which everything ties back to that, that’s why email is considered a sensitive application.” Conversations That Matter is a partner program with the Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University. Join veteran broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for these important and engaging Conversations shaping our future. Please become a subscriber and support the production of the program at conversationsthatmatter.tv