Cybersecurity: Managing Systems, Conducting Testing, and Investigating Intrusions

CHAPTER 10

Cybersecurity for End Users, Social Media, and Virtual Worlds

This chapter covers some essentials for end-user cyber education. Many of these items are security basics that all end users should master. End users are the weakest link and greatest vulnerability in our cybersecurity defenses. Through end-user education, you can attempt to patch that weakness, but to err is human, and you should never expect exemplary security behavior from all end users all of the time. End-user security awareness and security training are some of the most important steps that any enterprise can take to secure client-side computing.

Doing an Ego Search

What information about you is readily available on the Internet? Is there sufficient information to enable identity theft? Those are questions that you as an end user should resolve right away.

Perform multiple Internet searches, called an ego search, using all variations of your name, street address, phone number, and e-mail. You will probably be surprised at what you find. An ego search helps you find out if there is information posted about you that could be used to commit identity theft or could damage your reputation.

Cybersecurity training for end users is frequently called Internet safety. If there is too much information about you on the Internet, you have a safety problem. When you find information about yourself on a particular website, you can e-mail the website administrator and ask for your information to be taken off. If a website ...