Technology has introduced numerous wonderful inventions and opportunities. That paradigm changes have occurred as a result is an understatement. People wear smart watches, carry smart phones, tablets, medical devices and some even drive smart cars. There are cars smart enough to drive themselves. We live in a society where computing is part of our everyday life.
With technology comes responsibility. With responsibility comes risk.
Risk can take many meanings. A virus can enter your computer, that’s a risk. You overcome that by installing anti-virus software. Malefactors try in many ways to get into your devices, to gain access to your personal data. Some run programs in the background, capturing data about what sites you visit, what keystrokes you enter, then send that information back to their servers. You don’t know that’s happening, as it happens in the background. That’s why you install firewall software, to protect against such intrusions.
There are more mundane, day-to-day risks. Computers act in odd, mysterious ways. They crash, or they reboot for no reason at all. They freeze. This puts your work at risk. Especially if the crash or freeze occurs while you’re working on that critical deadline document. More than a few people have composed a masterpiece in Word, created a great PowerPoint presentation, or finally figured out the formula for a spreadsheet. It may have taken hours (!!) to get it right. Then, suddenly, the computer goes haywire, and the work is lost.
MINIMIZING DIGITAL RISK
by Dean Landsman