Love your Alexa and the ability to make things happen simply by voicing a command? Excited about your new Ring doorbell and being able to see who is at your door no matter where you are, thanks to Ring’s mobile capabilities? And don’t get us started on how great it is to program your lights and air conditioning to come on just before you arrive home.
Technology is changing our lives and artificial intelligence holds the promise of transforming our world with conveniences we can’t even imagine. But therein lies the rub: convenience doesn’t come without a downside and that underlying issue is security. Technology has proven to be vulnerable to hacking and cybercriminals are only getting smarter and better at breaching these devices that are designed to make our lives easier.
The possibilities are endless on how you can fall victim to fraud and identity theft. Think about those convenient electronic “wallets” where you can store all of your credit cards so you can easily access the information, conduct transactions and monitor your balances. Convenient? Absolutely. Risky. You bet.
How can we balance convenience with security? Consider that most security measures are password-based and you likely have several passwords you have to remember for various online applications that you use. It’s hard to remember all of them and which apply to certain accounts, so you look for a password manager where you can store all of these passwords. Convenient but highly vulnerable to unauthorized access by hackers.
Privacy and security protections are going to require better technology plus real behavior change. The consumer is going to have to be willing to implement stronger, better security applications – and commit to using them – and accept that security will come with minor inconveniences. It’s possible to integrate more and smarter technology into your life, but it must be done with a keen awareness of your vulnerabilities and action to shore up those gaps.
