Ah, the holidays. A time for friends, family, giving—and a whole lot of online shopping. The end of November brings a blight of days to commemorate America’s favorite past times: first Thanksgiving, then Black Friday, then Small Business Saturday—and, finally Cyber Monday, the mecca of sales for online shoppers.
But, all those great deals come at a steep price: your personal data could be at risk as global threats increase online.
With the world sharing sensitive personal data online, our focus on Cyber Monday is on cybersecurity.
Here are five things you need to know about cybersecurity on Cyber Monday.
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Black Friday and Cyber Monday are big business—for companies and for hackers. In 2018, more than 165 million people went shopping, spending close to $7.9 billion dollars online.
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Cybercrime is on the rise. Cybercrime this Black Friday is up 275% this year, according to Forbes. Cyberattacks are the fastest growing type of crime globally and predicted to cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, according to research by Cybersecurity Ventures.
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Many Americans practice unsafe shopping online. It’s relatively easy to put yourself at risk when shopping online: using public WiFi networks, clicking on fake online deals on mobile or your browser (i.e. “phishing”), or failing to secure your phone’s network are three ways you may compromise your data.
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Phishing attacks are in the billions. Phishing, i.e. that steeply discounted pair of Raybans that popped into your browser, accounts for 90% of Cyberattacks, with billions of phishing attacks occurring annually, according to Forbes. The increase in deals flooding your inbox could put you at risk for a phishing attack.
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The market for cybersecurity professionals is growing. Companies, governments and organizations need talented cybersecurity leaders to ward of cybercrime. The cybersecurity unemployment rate is at zero percent in 2019, where it’s been since 2011. And, the need is only growing: there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021, according to research by Cybersecurity Ventures.
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