The Human Firewall

I came across a video by Rob May on the human firewall and it was quite interesting so I requested to write a blog about it.

Humans are the weakest link in cybersecurity, this we all know already.

The anchor started by making the listeners vulnerable with a simple question “What is your porn stars name” and he said “take the name of your first pets and the name of the roads that you lived in when you were a child”. I am sure more than 70% of the listeners fell for this.

He asked them to turn to their neighbor and tell them their answers. Guess what, they just successfully gave a stranger some vital information about their selves.

It was amusing to the listeners and it kept me wondering about what happens on social media. You see a post that reads “reply with your location to meet people close to you” “Comment with your date of birth” and so many others.

He said “it’s amazing and that’s why when you post this on Facebook, so many people engage with it.

This information is sometimes used for password retrievals and banking. We are being tricked like this all the time and your technical know-how of cybersecurity may not even help you through this.

“Every 3 seconds, somebody suffers from Identity theft because of cyber-crime” Cyber crime is a huge problem that affects everyone of us.

It’s time to not just invest in traditional security (software, firewall and other security technologies) but to invest in people because our biggest risk and our biggest line of defense are the People-Human Firewall.

How much do you value your security? What is your data security worth?

People willingly give information more than ever, no thanks to social media.

Everyone needs to be aware of cybersecurity. We should talk about cybersecurity scams; it reduces the chances of people falling for them.