Safe Computing

Personal Identifiable Information (PII)

As we create a Web Site and post information we are adding to the Searchable PII. However, there is a dichotomy as a site like LinkedIn is a place where we want to be known for our accomplishments. But be aware, the person that looks at your LinkedIn will, most likely, look at things like TikTok, Instagram or Facebook.

PII considerations

  • Things that will be known by everyone: Name, Email (suggest a junk email), Picture, High School attended, College Attended, Properties you own, State-City of residence, all State-City of previous residence, Credit Reports, …
  • Gray area items, more cautious: Birth date, Place of Birth, Street Address, Phone Number, Maiden names of Mother and Grandmother, Drivers License Number, …
  • Things that you should strive to keep absolutely secret: Credentials for Access, Two-Factor Authentication on Financial accounts, Social Security Number, Tax records, …

Beware, Establish practices for your own Safety

  • Multi-factor authentication often requires you to enter a code that has been texted or emailed to you. Other types of authentication are biometrics (finger print or facial recognition).
  • Malware is often sent in attachments to things in email. Often they request you to click on an attachment and it starts the process of adding a virus to your computer.
  • Phishing is where unknown sources try to entice you into a response, like click here and receive $500. Often such systems impersonate someone like Amazon asking for login information. Be careful to look closely at source of email (ie amzn.com vs amazon.com).

Factors to Increase Security of System (recommend Watch 5.6 Video 2)

  • Most of my financials or critical systems use Multi Factor authentication
  • Biometrics is something that is used secure systems, fingerprints or facial recognition
  • Symmetric encryption is a type of encryption where only one key (a secret key) is used to both encrypt and decrypt electronic information.
  • Asymmetric cryptography, also known as public-key cryptography, is a process that uses a pair of related keys – one public key and one private key – to encrypt and decrypt a message and protect it from unauthorized access or use.
  • SSL Uses both Asymmetric and Symmetric Encryption

Nefarious Uses of Internet

  • A Virus or Malware compromise security, they are opposite of increasing security.
  • Phishing is a way to get a Virus on your machine, or a way to get you to input PII.
  • After a Virus or being compromised by Phishing it is advised to review all of you PII vulnerabilities.

Blog Post Reflection:

  1. Describe PII you have seen on project in CompSci Principles.
    Our project contains our first names. However, we used fake email addresses, and created other fake accounts so that we don’t put too much PII into our project
  2. What are your feelings about PII and your personal exposure? I feel like it can be slightly unnerving that now anyone can find out information about you from the internet. However, it is almost unavoidable, and we just have to be careful about what information we put online.
  3. Describe good and bad passwords? What is another step that is used to assist in authentication. Good passwords are long complex, so that they are difficult to guess, and so that it is less likely that multiple people share the same password. Many websites require capital letters, numbers, and/or special characters to be used in their password to add increased security.
  4. Try to describe Symmetric and Asymmetric encryption. Symmetric encryption encryption is a type of encryption that uses one hidden key to encrypt and decrypt info. Asymmetric encryption uses two keys, one private and one public, to encrypt and decrypt.
  5. Provide an example of encryption we used in AWS deployment. The SSH keys used (the public and private keys) are an example of asymmetric encryption
  6. Describe a phishing scheme you have learned about the hard way. Describe some other phishing techniques. One common phishing scheme I have fallen victim to is one where there is a popup on screen, but the button to close the popup is either very small or not a real button. Clicking on the popup then takes you to another website