The Indian Economy is going cashless and digital. This shift towards cashless digital economy has influenced many people to move towards digital banking and electronic transactions. Mobile wallets have turned out to be exceptionally famous alongside other UPI based applications and BHIM. The increase in digital transactions and the use of online payment platform have grabbed the attention of the cyber criminals. Studies show that in India, approximately 35-40 percent of the financial transactions are done via mobile devices which is expected to grow to 60-65 percent in 2017. All your accounts that are still logged into on the internet have to be properly secured. Are your contacts, emails, instant messaging apps, photos and banking apps are safe with the increase in digital and online operations?
The best solution to protect your smart phone is encryption. A built in hardware that secures your data while sending and receiving the information over internet. If the data is not encrypted, whatever is being sent and received will be readable to all. Encryption turns your data into unreadable format and can only be accessed with proper validity. In order to ensure highly secured data sharing, one needs to start securing the information at the very source. If the device is encrypted, all the account data will only be available with a unique key. No one will have the capacity to comprehend the information without the correct password even if the device falls into the wrong hands. “Today’s modern encryption is so strong that even super computers would take years to break” says Uthappa.
For Andriod users, plug in the phone while encrypting since the process takes more time while encrypting. To encrypt the phone follow the following steps. Under settings option, go to ‘Security’ menu. That is – Settings > Personal > Security > Encrypt phone. Set a password to newly encrypted files. The iOS users, under the settings go to General and then passcode lock. Now set a four-digit numeric pin or something more complex. To set a strong password, change the simple passcode setting to off.
To avoid unauthorized access to a phone, one is recommended to lock their phone properly with a strong password, pin or a pattern. Further, setting individual locking apps is a safer way to keep your data secure. No one can access your emails, banking or payment apps even if they get past your locked screen. In android this system is built-in but the iOS users cannot directly lock individual apps. But there are few apps available on Apple store that provide features to protect folders and documents. It is strongly recommended to avoid using common password and the password should be changed on regular basics.
Another way to keep your phone protected from hackers is to always install updates of software as soon as they are available. Updating stops the hackers from exploiting vulnerabilities of the software.
The apps available on Android Play Store can have virus infected apps, which upon downloaded gets full access to your phone. Hence you should not respond to the requests from app that do not look trustworthy.
When it comes to the use of open wireless network, anyone in the area can scoop in and get all the information through these connections.
Since there are a lot of risks involved in using open wireless network, is strongly recommended to stick to your phone’s data connection. Another way is to get hold of VPN apps like turbo, CM securities, Tunnel Bear for Android and iOS, which makes the traffic route through private encrypted channel, protecting your device from anyone who is snooping.
Always check for unusual activities on your accounts. You should never link payment wallets to debit/credit cards or their bank accounts. Keep a track of all messages and notifications that you receive from your bank or wallet providers, to make sure that you are aware of transactions.
