Online Safety Needs To Get Easier

As Denise pointed out earlier in the month the Stay Safe Online campaign promotes shared responsibility - "Each of us needs to do our part to make sure that our online lives are kept safe and secure." With the Internet a part of daily life for many of us, the need for trust and security online couldn't be greater, but it does need to get easier ...

With everything from guarding your online accounts, blocking spam emails, safeguarding your personal information, to ensuring computers and mobile devices are protected, it can start to feel like keeping safe online is a full time job.

A lot of it is common sense and none of it is difficult, but as we do more and more online, using lots of different sites and services, it can be easy to fall into bad habits like using the same password across multiple accounts and sharing too many personal details insecurely.

We are doing a good job ... mostly

We recently ran a survey around account protection which showed the majority of people are proactive in keeping their social networking profiles secure which is fantastic.

However, the survey also revealed less than half (43%) read the security and privacy policies of the sites they sign up to and that only 25% use extra account protection measures, like 2-step verification and linking additional email addresses, where available.

Shared responsibility for online safety

The internet is changing at an incredible pace and so too are the security challenges we face. While we firmly believe that each of us needs to be responsible for our own safety on the web, the industry must also step up and do more to protect its digital citizens too.

The White House initiative National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) is making great progress on this front, recently kicking off a number of pilot projects looking to improve the privacy, security, and convenience of sensitive online transactions.

Also the Respect Network, a trusted personal data network enabling customers and companies to connect and share information with strong security, privacy and trust, is growing fast and we can expect to see some exciting announcements from them in the coming months.

At miiCard we will always encourage people to be responsible for their online safety. But at the same time we are also working very hard to create trust online, working closely with the Respect Network and the NSTIC to develop secure and trusted solutions. After all this is what miiCard is about, giving people control of their identities and personal information so that we can do more of the things we want to do online with more ease, convenience and security than ever before.