The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

Nowadays, online is part of the jobs for everyone that needs to do in everyday. Their online activities include online selling, online buying, online searching and others. During online selling and buying, the customers need to submit their private information such as home mailing addresses, home phone numbers, credit card numbers, credit reports, and date of birth, social security numbers, and drivers’ license numbers, medical and insurance records to continue the purchasing process. Security issues include viruses, vulnerabilities, SQL injection and so on.

Threats of online security
1. Virus- is a program that "infects" a computer so that it does something that the owner does not control, usually to propagate itself, and do some sort of damage. Computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the user.

2. Vulnerabilities- are bugs in server based programs that allow attackers to take over a machine. There is much vulnerability in many software packages, and these are sometimes caused maliciouly, and, more often than not, caused by inexperienced programmers who do not know about things like buffer overflow problems.

3. SQL Injection- is one the most pervasive security vulnerabilities on the web today. It basically takes advantage of poorly constructed stored procedures. This method allows the attacker to create, read, update, or delete any arbitrary data accessible. The most serious scenario is when the attacker can completely compromise the database system and associated services. Many people are totally unaware that even big businesses are selling client's personal information to a variety of third parties and sometimes this information can turn up in the wrong hands.

How safe is our data?
Online activities are not face to face activities but why many people still believe and trust to the online security? There are some approaches can make sure the customers’ data are safety and avoid stolen or copy by others people. How safe is our data? One of the best ways to preserve the security of the Internet is greatly increasing our PC’s protections especially the online security. The best place to protect our servers, and even our workstations, and personal computers is to keep our software up to date. BusinessWeek.com consulted the experts, who offered the following advice for the PC users:
- Don’t show any available or sensitive personal information on our MySpace or Facebook profile or within messages to other members of the network. And don't click on any links in social network messages from people we don't know.
- Furthermore, try to remember that there will not have reputable company ask for our password, account number, or other log-in information via e-mail or instant message. Therefore, don’t respond to the mailing are asking for our private information.
- Use one of the many antivirus, antispyware, and firewall programs on the market. Normally, vendors offer all three functions in a single package. And many Internet service providers offer them free with our monthly subscription.
- Upgrade our browser to the most current version. From Microsoft, that's Internet Explorer 7. Mozilla's Firefox is on version 2, as is Apple's Safari browser.
- Pay attention to the messages from Windows that pop up on our screen, especially in the new Vista operating system. This is because they alway contain helpful security information that many users overlook.
- Turn on Windows' automatic-update function to get Microsoft's regular security patches.
Therefore, how safe is our data? I consider that how safe is our data is based on how the data protected by ourselves. For example, if our online security is good but we show our sensitive and available information to others, it can lead the attacker easily access to our PC. Otherwise, if our online security is poor also lead the attacker to access our PC easily.