Terrorism can take many different forms and according to a new study, it seems that people in America are now more concerned with the threat of cyber-terrorists than they are with the likes of al-Qaeda.
The security study carried out by Unisys discovered that the top three priorities for Americans when it comes to matters of security in the presidential campaign are as follows:
- Protecting government computer systems against hackers and criminals (74 percent)
- Protecting our electric power grid, water utilities and transportation systems against computer or terrorist attacks (73 percent)
- Homeland security issues such as terrorism (68 percent)
Admittedly when you compare the phone survey sample size of only 1,000 people to the total national population which is over 311,000,000 it’s hard to say that these results are reflective of the entire country. However, this doesn’t mean that they should be disregarded.
The survey asked “How important is it for a candidate to emphasize the following issues in the upcoming 2012 presidential election?” and had some additional questions about how concerned people were about identity theft and online fraud.
But should people actually be more concerned with cyber-terrorists? Realistically, there is a higher chance (touch wood) that I would fall prey to online fraud or identity theft than there is of me being injured (or worse) in a physical terrorist attack. But at least with the former, there are much more tangible measures that we can each take as individuals to prevent such woes befalling us.
It’s important to remember that any information stored or submitted online will run varying risks of being intercepted, shared or destroyed. If you make a habit of sharing or storing personal information in the cloud or through public channels, then you must live with the possibility that someone else could gain access to your data and use it for malevolent purposes.
If you have sensitive information that you must share, then you’d be well advised to seek a method of private secure sharing. After all, it’s best to share with your own world, not the whole world.
