- Professional shredders can guarantee that sensitive information will never get into the wrong hands by physically destroying it.
- There are now businesses that provide legitimate “data destruction services”, such as Absolute Destruction.
Data security will always be a matter of special concern in all stages of human interaction, be it personal or business.
The correctness of data is vital for it to be useful. As computer and internet technology progressed, developments in the way people access and move data have made parallel improvements. We are now living at an age when data can be stolen.
In the Philippines, most of the cybercrimes were carried out in the banking sector. The increasingly busy lifestyle in the country has brought about a surge in transactions using credit cards, e-wallets, or similar instruments instead of cash.
Moving to cashless society
Likewise, the threat of Covid-19 also contributed to lessening over-the-counter transactions and the transition to cashless exchanges as Filipinos prefer to stay within their homes.
According to the online ready reference Statista, the volume of electronic money transactions processed by banks and financial institutions in the Philippines went up by 160 per cent to 1.65 billion pesos in 2020.
The dynamic pace of online bank transactions in the Philippines took place despite a 2016 heist pulled off by a bank branch manager of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation.
Based on a February 2016 report by Reuters, the perpetrators “used fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system to steal $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. https://www.reuters.com/article/cyber-heist-philippines-idUSL3N20Z1FL”
Cybercrimes are being increasingly perpetrated within the realm of cyberspace countermeasures need to be placed in that domain.
Cybersecurity is loosely defined as the set of actions to prevent hackers from gaining access to an individual or group’s computer or network. To guard against it, countries came up with laws.
Active approach
When asked about how bad was the Philippines’ problem with data security, Robert Paguia, Division Chief of the Philippines’ International Cooperation on Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center, said in an interview recently that compared to the times before, the implementation of the Data Privacy Act (DPA) of 2012 saw data security issues much less of a problem now.
“This is because the National Privacy Commission (NPC) took an active approach to orient and making Filipinos, both here and abroad, more aware of their rights as data subjects which include among other things knowing how to protect and secure their personal information and in so doing would amount to improved data security.”
He suggested that the government “improve its cybersecurity posture” as well as those of private companies by putting in place security measures.
Like any conventional crimes, cybercrimes are based on deception, an increasingly common type of cybercrime is “Phishing.”
Phishing sounds like “fishing,” but the similarities don’t end there. Just like the act of fishing baits a fish into an inescapable trap, phishing lures a potential prey into revealing passwords to sensitive personal data such as tax and banking information, business plans, and personal data of clients and employees among others.
Piece of mind
Back in the days when desktop and portable computers and electronic data transmission through wires or fibre optic cables are still unknown, information was encoded on paper and kept in cardboard folders.
Sensitive files were burned or shredded by a special machine, a “shredder order to prevent them from falling into the hands of a client’s business competitors, state enemies, or political rivals. In the age of the internet, this has its counterpart.
There are now businesses that provide legitimate “data destruction services” such as Absolute Destruction. It was said that professional shredders can guarantee that sensitive information will never get into the wrong hands by physically destroying it.
“Whether you are a private citizen or you’re running a business, you inevitably accumulate data that needs to be kept confidential,” a Canada-based firm’s website said.
“It could be banking records, tax information, old contracts, business plans, personal data about clients and employees, or something else”.
“Whatever it is, Absolute Destruction offers you industry-leading professional shredding. We make it possible for you to get peace of mind and have the final word: your data destruction will have you feeling immediate relief, one less burden to worry about,” the firm’s website said.
- Gilbert Felongco is an experienced freelance reporter from the Philippines.