China TV Robert Siciliano Identity theft speaker on identity theft @HotspotShield

Why don't people pay more attention to the sort of advice we just heard from Jim? That's the question I put to Robert Siciliano, identity theft expert with Hotspot Shield.

Eh, it boils down to laziness. Uh, they don't really, uh, think that they need to. They believe that it can't happen to them. Uh, most people aren't thinking security. You know, security goes against our nature. It's a little bit of work, and as a result, poor security practices end up where individuals and large corporations get hacked.

Do you think, you know, you mentioned laziness, but do you think that people are just overwhelmed? I mean, they've got so much going on in their lives and it's just kind of a hassle. You've got to have a strong password for this email address and you've got like a million of them. You've got your personal, your work ones. Do you think that's part of it?

You know, certainly they are overwhelmed. There's no question about it. You know, in my own family, my wife with the two kids, she's overwhelmed. You know, that's how it is. But if you were to take advantage of different technologies like a password password manager. A password manager manages all your passwords. It creates secure passwords, and it even fills in all the passwords for you in each site. Then that takes all the labor out of password management.

Now, some would argue that if you're connected to the internet, you're at risk no matter what. Would you agree?

Absolutely. As long as you are connected to the web, uh, then there is a chance that your devices can be compromised.

So hackers have even accessed video gaming systems like Sony's PlayStation. Just one breach, that was in 2011, it cost Sony nearly $200 million. When these types of things happen, who's hurt more? Is it the businesses or the consumers?

Yeah, you know, it affects everybody, but certainly the businesses, their reputations end up being damaged. Often they're spending hundreds of dollars per record breached on, um, on crisis PR, on upgrades in technology, on class action lawsuits. So brands definitely take the brunt of it.

And for industrialized countries around the world, the days of buying things in person with cash, they seem like they're long gone. Now it's credit cards that are used for online purchases. And as technology develops, should we just resign ourselves to more insecurity, do you think?

So I think that people just need to up their security intelligence. They have to understand what new account fraud is, what account takeover is, how to secure devices. Look, we're interested in all kinds of stuff, different TV shows, taking the kids back and forth to soccer, you know, baking a cake. You also have to pay attention to security because one of these days you're going to be a victim of some type of a crime. But if you up your intelligence in regards to these issues, you can avoid that.

Now let me take that one step further. As we up our game, they up their games though, don't they?

They do. So the major corporations and the IT security professionals are in a battle 24/7, 365. It's good versus evil. Now, as enterprise networks harden, as they're spending more money to tighten up their systems, the bad guys do go after the little guy. So the little guy does have to stay on top of their game. It is essential that you take responsibility for the data in which you are entrusted with, which essentially is yours, and if you are a small business, it's your clients as well. And it's just a matter of Reading a book, taking a class, and knowing what your options are.

Robert Siciliano from Boston, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.