Watch out online shoppers! Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the busiest on-line shopping days of the year and the bad guys are planning to get rich with YOUR MONEY!  Don’t let the excitement of the season distract you from being vigilant.

If you are like many, this time of year brings a flurry of holiday and end-of-year preparations. For some, holiday shopping is on your list of “to do’s” for this coming weekend. For certain, there are deals to benefit from on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But where there are shoppers, there are criminals trying to take advantage of your rush and lowered awareness.

Hackers attack every 39 seconds and one in three Americans were hacked in the past year. Cybercrime, security breaches and ransomware have become every day topics in the media. The most common element of security breakdowns is the human component often delivered in the most innocent and innocuous way. One of the most proactive ways to prevent yourself from being a victim of cyber fraud and to protect your company is by setting a robust password.

Many people are skeptical that the cloud is secure due to lack of knowledge about the technology and measures to protect the data from within. In the United States, more than 90% of enterprises and 52% of small and medium sized businesses use the cloud specifically for storage. In reality, many professionals perceive the cloud to be quite secure as compared to legacy platforms which are on-premise back-up, storage and computing systems. This was confirmed in a survey of IT professionals of medium to enterprise level companies conducted by Clutch. 64% said that the cloud is more secure than legacy systems. In fact, CFO’s are also jumping onboard. According to Forbes Magazine, 74% of Tech Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) say cloud computing will have the most measurable impact on their business in 2017.

Over the past few years there have been breaches to secure databases, some of which exposed half a billion users' data. It's easy and understandable to wonder if you are among that list, but how do you tell? The answer is really quite simple.