How would you secure your Digital-You

WE KNOW HOW TO SECURE IN REAL WORLD (ADT, anti theft, close circuit camera etc.), HOW ABOUT IN CYBERSPACE

We all are aware on how to keep ourselves secure in this real world – we install ADT home security to secure our home, we have smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector to detect fire or smoke, we install anti theft system in our car to alert us when something goes fishy with our car, some people install close circuit camera in and around the house to monitor continuously for any suspicious acts but what about our new home in cyberspace? Are we aware of the threat that we are exposed to in cyberspace? What are the measurements that we can take to secure ourselves in the cyberspace?

BIGGEST BANK HEIST IN HISTORY COST $45 MM (Indian bank, ATMs, Visa/Mastercard)

In May 2013, the US Secret Service has uncovered the biggest bank heist in history and arrested 9 people in New York who are part of a cyber-hacker ring spread across 26 countries in the world. In two occasions they’ve hacked into an Indian bank, withdrew money from ATMs around the world, and then hacked into a Master and Visa card processor in the U.S. totaling $45 million. A few days ago, I watched in the PBS Newshour that as of now the total loss has exceeded $350 million. Now days everything is so connected that any small breach in security causes the victim a very high cost.

EVEN IT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE SITTING AT HOME NOT CONNECTED TO INTERNET

It even can happen when you’re sitting at your home. Do you know that Google had gathered home WIFI data while driving about photographing the world with its street view camera cars. It’s like someone is getting into your home and taking whatever one is able to pick. The catch is Google did only gathered data that’s unencrypted. So it more like you’re keeping your valuable stuff at the roadside and allowing anyone to grab that.

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDAR (DIRECTOR OF NSA ) - "CYBERCRIME COSTS $1 TRILLION WORLDWIDE"

General Keith Alexander, the director of National Security Agency (NSA) has warned in an address at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C., that cyberattacks are causing “the greatest transfer of wealth in history”. He mentioned, citing McAfee’s estimation, that the global cost of cybercrime is $1 trillion.

KNOW YOUR RISKS – MALWARE (VIRUS, WORMS, TROJAN HORSES, SPYWARE), PHISHING, SOCIAL ENGINEERING, IDENTITY THEFT

So how you keep yourself and your property secure in this cyber world? First you need to know the threats you have in this cyberspace. Let me tell you some of the ways through which your privacy in cyberspace can be compromised:

Malicious software, in short known as - malware, is used or programmed to by attackers to disrupt computer operation, gather sensitive information, or gain access to private systems.  There various kind of malwares like Virus, Worms, Trojan Horses, Spyware etc. I'm not going to define them here as you can google it if you're interested to go into that detail but in short: Viruses and Worms are kind of program that are downloaded or copied from one machine to another to harm your computer and compromise your security. Trojan horses claims to do something but end up doing something else that's not in your best interest like sending to the intruder what you type on your keyboard. Spyware is usually used for marketing purpose but again can do more harm then it may seems.

Phishing means sending an email that falsely claims to be a particular enterprise (e.g. you bank) and asking for sensitive information like SSN, bank account, password etc. In some cases, if you recall the Nigerian scam, where it was pretended as the Nigerian central bank and promising you millions of dollars to be sent to your bank account but asking you to send you some processing fee upfront. 

 Social engineering is the type of attack relies on trusting nature of people and the art of deception. Social engineering attacks try to manipulate people into divulging confidential information.

Identity theft occurs when someone uses or exploits the personal identifying information of another person to commit fraud or engage in other unlawful activities. Your identity could be name, email address, social, user name and password etc.

SO HOW YOU PROTECT YOURSELF

As you now know the threats, let's look into some of the tips that will help you to reduce your exposure in the cyberspace's security vulnerabilities:

1. Reset your password periodically: it’s recommended to at least change your password once in a year – you can keep this kind of your new year’s resolution
2. Keep at least two sets of password: for financial and non-financial purpose. And never use password that’s used in any of your financial accounts for any online free sites.
3. Keep at least two sets of email addresses: for financial and non-financial accounts. There are repeated number of events every day when a company apologizes for loosing your user information due to some hacking or software glitch. Last month, Facebook announced that 6 million user’s email address or phone numbers were leaked due to a bug
4. Be aware of phishing: you should always verify the legitimacy of any email that asks you to click on a link or ask you to send over personal/financial information
5. Always keep your antivirus updated: it may be an extra cost as you’ve to renew it each year but it’s worth it if you’re connected to internet all the time
6. Protect your wireless network with authentication password: unprotected WiFi can no way let your neighbor know whether you forgot to keep your network protected or is intended as a public hotspot. Not to mention the security threat of your home computer being accessed by a digital thief
7. Turn off your WIFI at home when you’re not using them or not at home or at least out on a vacation. The longer an intruder gets time to attack your system the easier for them to break it
8. There are so many technical ways you can prevent your identity theft like using biometric security using fingerprint, voice, retina scan, face etc., or use of digital signature but you should be aware of this threat at the first place. So don’t disclose your personal information on the web or to anyone you don’t have trust relationship and periodically check your credit report, bank account transactions etc. to keep monitoring if you’re the victim of an identity theft
9. Now with the proliferation of smart phones and tablet, keep your digital device password protected and make the settings to lock it automatically after few seconds of inactivity
10. When you type in the password on your smartphone or tablet in public, specially in a jump packed subway or bus, watch out for digital perpetrator who watch on what you type in. You may think what's the big deal as that person isn't going to get hold of your device but how are you so sure. How about you leave your device by mistake and the same person pick that up or in worst case, what if that person is a real bad guy and snatch it from you after you get off

Finally, as the cyberspace is new to all of us we’re all learning and evolving on its security. We should accept the reality that we’ve assets not only in our real world but also in the cyber world and that need similar or more protection compare with what we put forth for our real world assets.

The Essence of Loneliness

It all had started by a genius British scientist working in a nuclear research laboratory in 1990. The WWW (World Wide Web) had started its journey from a confined laboratory room which now has been used in every corner of the world. I should say this is the most influential invention in the history of mankind after the invention of wheel and there is a commonality in the purpose of the inventions between these two and that is – they both connect people. Before the wheel, life was slow, at max 5 mph, which is the average speed, a person can walk up to, and similarly before the internet, you can’t imagine hundreds of millions of people are communicating through the web instantly across the globe. This became possible through this web technology.

In this post I'll try to see the benefits and risks of being connected at all the time and also seek for ways on how to balance our life within this ever-connectedness of our life.

Can you imagine a day without internet at home, forget about at work? When you need a book, you log on to Amazon.com; when you want to watch movie, you connect to Netflix; when you want to get the latest updated news, you connect to CNN.com or your preferred news site; when you are in need of any academic reference, you log on to Wikipedia.org; you pay your bill online; you buy stuffs online; you share your feelings, on facebook and on twitter, that means, online. We get everything within our fingertip in a split of a second. The World Wide Web has changed the way we, the human, live. Now a days, the best knowledgeable person is not the one who knows the most but the one who can find the most, and find that quickest. It’s completely changed the way we define knowledge, i.e. learn it and remember it, due to the fact that there is enormous amount of information available surrounding us that no human brain can remember all of them. So it has changed from “Learn, Learn and Learn” to “Learn, Unlearn and Re-learn”.

But with all of these game changing benefits of the World Wide Web i.e. internet technology, what we’re missing or what have we lost? What are we trading off to get that amazingly faster and connected world? We’re losing the essence of “Loneliness”. Think about your day, or any usual day – for me, I woke up with the sound of alarm, set on my blackberry; before I got off the bed, I had a quick peak on my blackberry if I have any early morning meeting, or any important email from the offshore team in India, then after breakfast I log on to nextbus.com, that is on my blackberry, to check exactly what time the next bus will arrive at my stop, then read today’s newspaper on my smartphone. Once I’m at work, it’s all about these digital technologies: computer, intranet, internet, blackberry, web conference, teleconference, you name it.  

No doubt that we’re getting a lot of work done in a short period of time because of all these digital technologies, but at what cost? In South Korea, a clinic is opened to provide treatment, what they call is Internet Addiction Disorder, to young people who are addicted to internet. It’s not only in South Korea, but in the USA, China, Netherland etc., there are clinics to treat people with Internet Addiction Disorder. Here's a shocking story about an infant whose parents were addicted to internet:

"In 2009, Kim Sa-rang, a 3-month-old Korean child, died from malnutrition after both her parents spent hours each day in an internet cafe raising a virtual child on an online game, Prius Online'

Another risk of this ever connected world is that we’re losing our creativity and getting very less time for critical thinking. There is almost no time to think because you need a quiet uninterrupted time to think creatively– it’s found in a study that on an average, an employee gets 3 minutes of continuous uninterrupted time during a work day. In every few seconds or minutes you’ll see an email message pops up or will hear the ring of your phone.

“Once there is an interruption, statistics tells us that it takes 20 minutes to get back to the level of concentration that we were at prior to the disruption.”

We became so much use to with this interruption that we lose the chance of being alone even when we get it. For me, the first thing I do after jumping into the car and starting the engine is to turn on the radio. We became so much afraid of being alone at any point in time.

What’s the way out of this situation? How do we get back some of what we have already lost? Good news is that a good number of people have started thinking about how to balance their life; business organizations aren't out of that movement. Intel has given all of their managers a few hours in a week to be in their offices while they are disconnected from their internet and phone, to provide them a quiet time to keep themselves creative. Google also has similar quiet hours for their employees.

How about one day in a week or month, we unplug the internet from our computer and unplug the cable at home and give us a time to be alone and think about what we have done, what are we doing and what we’re going to do, and to realize what we have lost from our life.

My point is not to ask everyone that we should throw our all digital devices out the window but we should at least try balance our life while using these digital technologies and use them responsibly. By doing that we might get some of the essence of loneliness back to our life. 

I would like to finish this post with a research outcome, conducted by Gloria Mark, Ph.D., an associate professor at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and a leading expert on work, who researched on workplace interruptions and came to a fascinating conclusion: 

"We don't have work days -- we have work minutes that last all day. In our study, we observed for a half day, then we shadowed 36 managers, financial analysts, software developers, engineers, and project leaders for three days. We literally followed people around all day and timed every event [that happened], to the second. We defined an event as the amount of time that people spent in continuous uninterrupted use of a device or an interaction with other people. That meant a telephone call, working on a document, typing an e-mail, or interacting with someone who came into their cubicle.

What we found is that the average amount of time that people spent on any single event before being interrupted or before switching was about three minutes. To be specific, three minutes and five seconds, on average. That does not include formal meetings, because we figured if they were in a formal meeting, they were prisoners at the meeting, right? They couldn't leave or switch activities. So we didn't count that. Then we looked at [use of] devices, working on a PC, the desk phone, using any kind of paper document, using a cell phone. We found the average amount of time that people spent working on a device before switching was 2 minutes and 11 seconds.

You think you sit at your PC for a long time, but it's not true. You usually sit at it briefly before you switch to something else. You're interrupted by a person, by a phone call, or you do something on paper."

Reference: 

https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/2012/01/12/the_most_important_invention_in_human_history.html

http://businessjournal.gallup.com/content/23146/too-many-interruptions-work.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prius_Online

Healing Naturally

Today I’m going to share few of my personal stories that had changed the way I see medications and inspired me to look deeper into natural healing.

What is natural healing?

Natural healing is giving your body a chance to work organically to solve a health problem. Like for example – if you've a tiny cut or scratch on your skin and you wait for a day or two, you see that your body takes care of it and heals it. But the problem comes when the cut is large enough that you need to aid your body to fight against it.

Let me clarify first – I’m no way advocating to stop going to doctor's office or visiting CVS but my soul purpose of this post is to discover how we can limit those.

Do we really read the label on the medication seriously? I certainly not. Because if I read those warnings given on it, I won’t be able to swallow any of those. And more over those warning changes periodically. For example, now FDA is saying to not to give any cough medications (e.g. Delcym) to child under 5 years of old. I clearly remember it was 2 years and under. So what happened to it that I gave my daughter cough medicine when she was just three. It declared safe a few years ago but with discoveries of more data on side effects now has proved it harmful. What’re the side effects she went through due to this misinformation? You can’t sue pharmaceuticals or FDA as they've all those fine prints to protect them.

If you think vitamin tablets are risk free or have no side effects, read the new research findings. You won’t take them if you know that apparently candy like vitamin tablets are not free of side effects.

Let’s check out few warnings of a very popular medication:

• Clinical trials of of up to three years duration have shown an increased risk of serious cardiovascular (CV) thrombotic events, myocardial infarction, and stroke, which can be fatal.
• It can lead to onset of new hypertension or worsening of pre-existing hypertension, either of which may contribute to the increased incidence of CV events
• It can cause congestive heart failure and edema
• It can cause serious gastrointestinal (GI) adverse events including inflammation, bleeding, ulceration, and perforation of the stomach, small intestine, or large intestine, which can be fatal.
• Long-term administration of this medication has resulted in renal papillary necrosis and other renal injury.
• It can cause serious skin adverse events such as exfoliative dermatitis, Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS), and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN), which can be fatal

So, can you guess the name of the medication for which I’ve mentioned the side effects? It’s very famous, over the counter medication - Motrin (an NSAID), which is a brand and the generic ingredient is Ibuprofen.

Let’s now check how a medicine gets approved by the regulatory body i.e. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA approves a medicine when the pharmaceutical companies can prove a drug is sufficiently safe for human to use. The word “sufficiently” is interesting as that scale is determined by applying to a sufficiently large number of people with certain level of benefits and limited amount of adverse effect. For example “Claritin” tablet was trialed with 90,000 of people and got FDA approval. As a side note, there's an ongoing debate on the funding sources of FDA that may have put them in a place where an independent review of the drug and drug related processes are very tough, if not impossible, to take place which provides a plausible explanation to withdrawal of some FDA approved drugs voluntarily by the pharmaceutical companies.

So what are our options? should we be dependent on medications for every little things? My answer is definitely not. We should look back on natural healing - giving our body a chance to heal itself. This body is an amazing machine - which has regenerative process inbuilt and can cure a lot of things without any external help. And when an supplementary supports are given, it can prevent and cure lot of day to day life health problems, which it’s been doing for millions of years.

To see how natural healing works, I have been doing some experiment on me for last couple of years. Let’s see some of the amazing results:

My back pain started few years ago which turned so worse that I had to call sick often, specially during the cold days in winter. And with every visit to my primary physician, I was getting prescription for Motrin tablets for one to two weeks. One day I thought I don’t want to go my entire life with Motrin every now and then, specially after reading those side effects. As my mother had advised me to rub mustard oil heated with garlic (which is pretty stinky, so I have to take bath afterwards) at the paining muscles. That drastically changed the frequencies of getting the back pain. With that I also changed the mattress with which in last 2 years I had zero sick call due to the back pain.

I had done another experiment in this Spring. I got bad cough and itchy throat which is not so abnormal for Spring. Instead of rushing to CVS or Walmart pharmacy, as an experiment, I had started drinking ginger and clove tea - the suggestion I had gotten from my mother. It took me three to four weeks to fully recover but my cough was completely cured without taking a single allergy tablet. Until it was cured I was carrying a ziploc bag of cloves and put one clove into mouth to suppresses the immediate coughing when I was outside: on the train, at work etc. It was very tempting to fall into the trap of attractive adds on TV showing happy people who are on allergy medications for the entire length of Spring. But I pushed that out to prove that it's possible to realistically heal cough with natural means.

If you think that natural healing works only with small issues – that’s wrong. Even you can control your high blood pressure if you eat one apple every day, lowering intake of sodium, and exercise regularly.

Finally I would like to close this post with a simple comment - we've lost tremendous amount of things in our life for the sake of getting speed in our life which came with a very high cost. Let's look back, seek solution from nature - it can provide us solutions for majority of our problems which we have decided to overlook for long.

Caretaker Government or Democracy 2.0

In 1995 when Awami League and Jamaat demanded the "Caretaker government", I found that hypocritical because - you're saying that you don't trust the political government to undertake the national election and then once you get the winner of the election, you hand over the power to the same "not-so-trustful" political parties. It's like - "I can't trust you for the 3 months to take limited decisions only related to election but I can hand you over my full trust for the next 5 years when you can take decisions that start from changing the constitution or going for a full fledged war". To me that's hypocrisy. And the hypocrisy reaches to it's epic point when I see Sheikh Hasina is singing the same song that Khaleda Zia sang during the 1995 Non Cooperation Movement ("অসহযোগ আন্দোলন"). Anyway, for at least in this stand, I'm still a gentleman (ভদ্র লোকের এক কথা) - "The concept of Caretaker Government  is a hypocritical and shameful for any country"

Now let's take a look into the bigger picture of our political system. I believe "Democracy" has reached to it's point where we can safely label it as obsolete. The reason of this isn't that the democracy is no longer relevant now, which is nothing close to true, but mainly because of the reason that it's systemic process has reached to its limit. Consider the process of electing a government - we vote once in 5 years and then the elected government is on its own way, just like in past when one sails a ship on a voyage and then waiting at the port for it to come back in months or years. For voyage, we don't do it anymore because the technology has changed and enabled us to tag GPS navigation, Sattelite phone etc. to track the ship at it's every points by the precision of inches. Now the question is, why we let our government to set sail for 5 years on its own way and wait for 5 years to see if it has reached its destination (i.e. fulfilling it's commitment and agendas).

Now with the invention of the digital technologies we have the technologies and knowledge to change this outdated election process entirely. We can use digital technologies (mobile phone, web, social networking, wireless technologies etc.) with which we can vote in near realtime fashion for any seemingly decisive matters, like - should we go to World Bank for Padma bridge, should government provide transit to India, should government sign TIFA with the USA, Should we ban Jamaat, Should the Constitution be changed, should Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir stay as State Minister and what not. Essentially I'm talking about getting referendum on every major decisions. We didn't do it before because that wasn't feasible, expensive and not cost effective but now it's not the case, or at least it won't be the case in 10/15 years.

To get a sense of how this referendum would look like, just look into the "অ ন লা ই ন ভো ট" on http://www.prothom-alo.com/ or the way White House use voting on petitions on https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/. There'll be some major technological and social challenges along this way like how every eligible citizen would be connected securely so that their identify isn't compromised. If you had asked me whether this is possible 10 years ago, I would answer as straight no but look at how we had successfully implemented the National ID project for the entire country which seems extremely difficult, if not impossible to achieve for a developing country like Bangladesh. It may read like science fiction but  who dared to think 20 years ago that almost everyone in Bangladesh would be connected using a device that you can hold on your palm.