Do those endless spam e-mails seem like just another annoyance? They may be more dangerous than you think.
Many spam messages may actually be part of a phishing scam to steal someone’s credit card number. These and other “Emerging Cyber Threats” will be the topic for the second Cyber Security Summit held today and Tuesday at the UT Conference Center.
“We’ve asked our speakers to address the latest trends in cyber security,” said Tammy Alexander, program coordinator for Fountainhead College. “If we are not securing our computers, we are propagating insecurity.”
Around 18 security professionals in academics, government and private industries will speak at the conference. There are 200 participants signed up to attend the summit.
In addition to the presentations, there will be a roundtable discussion on what is being done to fight cyber crime in the United States.
Possible cyber threats include computer network crime, identity theft, phishing scams, botnets, internet crimes against children and violations of intellectual property rights.
Phishing scams, such as spam, work by luring a person to a Web site under false pretenses. Under the guise of selling a product, a person may be tricked into giving up personal information.
“(Spam) is just another way to scam people,” Alexander said.
Hackers have used techniques such as botnets and denial of service attacks to bring down company computers, said Andrew Young, special agent for the FBI.
“In the past, it was more for pride. Now it’s more for monetary profit,” Young said.
Cyber threats can also endanger the critical infrastructure of an organization. For example, Alexander said it would be dangerous if someone was able to break into the computer systems of TVA. This organization controls the power of seven states.
“It’s very important that they secure their systems,” Alexander said.
Some advice, Young said, for people to protect themselves from cyber threats includes shutting off their computer and internet connection when not in use as well as having good firewall and antivirus software. People should also know where they are going when using the Internet and should make sure that Internet sites are secure.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is,” Young said. “Anything you send over the Internet is public information. E-mail is more like a postcard than a letter.”
The summit is sponsored by The University of Tennessee, Tennessee Valley Authority and its Inspector General’s Office, the FBI and Fountainhead College of Technology.
Slides from this year’s summit and last year’s will be available at http://cybersecurity.utk.edu.
