Edward Swift - Cyber security

Have you ever wondered just how many people are actually affected by cyber attacks? Have you been affected and though you were in the minority?

This week is ConnectSmart week, a government initiative to raise awareness of cyber security and promoting ways to protect yourself, your business, and others online. As part of the campaign, they did some research on New Zealanders’ cyber security, which turned up with some very fascinating results.

83% of New Zealanders have experienced some kind of cyber security breach. When asked axactly what had happened, 27% of them had spam sent from their account to their contacts and 25% clicked a malicious link. One in eight have also had their credit card details misused.

When it comes to email security, there are a few ways to combat those two big issues. Firstly, if you receive an email from a friend with a couple of random sentences and asking you to click a link you don’t recognise, it might pay to flick them a txt or email them back (in a new email, not a reply as it may go to the spammer) to check if they sent it. If not, let them know that you received some spam from them and advise them it might pay to email their contacts letting them know not to click the link.

Sometimes it can be hard to tell if a link is malicious or not. Scammers are getting very good at making emails look like they are from legitimate organisations. The IRD and banks are a common examples. If you get an email from an organisation saying you need to update your banking profile or you need to log in to update your security settings, just hold fire before you click that link.

Check the email address of who it is actually from. Sometimes they’ll misspell the company domain or they’ll have an international email address instead of a ‘.co.nz’. If you’re still uncertain, hover your mouse above the link in the email (don’t click it) and you should see what the actual URL is it wants to send you to at the bottom of the screen. Once again, it could be misspelt or not the organisation’s actual NZ address. If in doubt call your bank or the IRD using the numbers on their website, not what might be listed on the email, to check if the email is legit.

Going back to the stats, what was most alarming to me was that 61% of those who had some sort of cyber security breach hadn’t changed their behaviour online.

So what can you do to stay safe online? A few weeks ago I wrote a few tips on how to stay safe which you can read here. ConnectSmart also has some great tips which you can find at ConnectSmart.govt.nz.

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