Professor Keith Martin is an information security professor at Royal Holloway university of London. He discusses the common threats facing the public of having personal information stolen online and tips for staying secure. He recommends keeping passwords and security information secret, being cautious about information shared online, and keeping devices updated with the latest security software. All organizations experience cyber attacks and individuals should be careful, as stories of problems are common. Criminals will always find new ways to exploit human weaknesses with technology, so complete security is not possible. Individuals must decide which companies and services to trust online based on reputation and security practices.

1. PROF. KEITH MARTIN INTERVIEW
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0.00 – Hi, could we please have your name.
0.06 – I’m Professor Keith Martin and I’m a professor of information security at Royal
Holloway university of London.
0.15 – What is the information security group and its main aims?
0.18 – The information security group is a department here at Royal Holloway so we are
about 18 researchers, we teach, research and generally engage in the industry of cyber
security or information security.
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0.00 – What are the most common threats that we face as the public and how can we
combat that?
0.08 – Well I think in terms of threats that we all face you have really good two things to
worry about. One is the information that you may have on your devices that you don’t want
other people to see or you don’t want other people to misrepresent. The second threat you
have got is information used to identify yourself when you do things online on your devices
because if someone gets hold of these they can present themselves as you.
0.34 – What tips would you give to somebody who wants to keep their account secure
and all their information secure?

2. 0.40 – So in terms of keeping your information secure in case of these threats there are many
things you can do, but I would say there are three things you should focus on. So one would
be keeping security information secret, so if your basically using pins, passwords or
passphrases or you have tokens that you use to access online services. You must remember
that they are you so on anything you do, anyone that gets hold of these things can present
themselves as you so I think the first thing you do is to keep these safe and don’t share them
with anyone. The second thing I would say is to be very very cautious about any information
you put out there into cyberspace such as Whatsapp and social media sites because you
almost have to assume that anything you say or any information you put into these could at
some point in the future get out out there and be discovered so you have to be very very
cautious about what information you are putting on there about yourself. I think the third
thing is making sure the technologies that you use are as safe as they can reasonably be so we
often say keep a clean machine, so in terms of a phone or a laptop or a computer. Make sure
you are following all the best practices, you’re installing all the right security software and
your keeping software up to date, uploading patches and you’re basically following all the
guidelines so you’re not letting your machines deteriorate because the thing is when
machines deteriorate or you run old versions then information can leak so I would say it is
securing your security information and being cautious about what you put online and keeping
a clean machine.
2.15 – Have you had any experience with these examples of information being stolen at
the university or any personal experience?
2.24 – So in terms of have we here at Royal Holloway had problems of this type I think the
answer is that every organization is suffering problems and I don’t think Royal Holloway has
any more problems than any one else but what is very clear to us from the people we speak to
and if you follow the news stories you should see as well that are all organizations are prone
to problems at the moment and all individuals as well so as individuals we have to be very
careful. I think if you ask your friends or speak to colleagues you will discover someone very
quickly who has had some difficulties of this type so I think it is very prevalent.
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0.00 – Can we all stay one step ahead of criminals?
0.05 – Yeah in some sense there is a sort of game going on all the time, which is to do with
threats that we face in cyberspace and the defences we try and put in place and it is certainly
true that the defences evolve as the attack factors change I mean as they do for any kind of

3. threat we face in society. You see the way society responds where there is a bad accident like
9/11 or the Paris terrorist attacks, things always change. I don’t think you can ever get on top
of that game at all because I think crime will always be around in any society. We are human
beings and cyberspace is just a new place where people can conduct crimes, there may be a
few different things you can do in cyberspace but it’s still a vector over which people can
conduct crimes. I think the biggest problem you have got is that it’s not security of
technologies, technologies to a certain extent you can keep on strengthening but these
technologies are used by human beings and most of these crimes exploit the fact that it is
human beings that are using these machines, they are using phones, they are using computers
so most incidents and most criminal attacks will try and exploit that gap that exists between
the devices and humans. So for example they will go after passwords or pins or they will
trick people into passing over information or we see a lot of the time they may trick people
into doing things like giving away information when they shouldn’t. I think you’re never
going to stop that activity, wherever there are human beings there will always be crime and
unfortunately that’s the world we live in. We make it, we are it.
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0.00 – With the threat of account hacking and personal information being stolen should
we still trust and use banks, social media websites and online shops? And why so?
0.14 – Okay so it’s a very interesting question that surrounds which services online that we
should use in the presence of threats and attacks and I think we have to make a big decision
to whether we actually want the value and the advantages of using these services or we
don’t. We see organization after organization falling prone to things, most recently here in
the UK we saw a big incident involving the supplier of talk talk for example. Should we trust
a particular bank, should we trust a particular phone company and I think it’s just very much
us that have to decide these questions for ourselves based on all the information we use. I
mean why should you put your money in a particular bank, should you use a particular phone
service provider. You might well use stories you have heard about them to decide whether
they have good online security, you might use stories you hear about their chairman or their
shareholders or other aspects of their business. The one thing we can’t do is we can’t be
100% safe dealing with organizations like that, we have to make a decision and it’s a
personal decision of what organizations we trust and which ones we don’t. Because it’s a
very important part that when you do use a bank or you use a phone company you are trusting
them to an extent with the information you are providing and the data you are providing and
it’s ultimately your call, you base it on their reputation and how much you want their services
at the prices they are offering you. So yes I think we should be trusting banks, we should be
trusting mobile phone companies but it’s up to us as individuals which ones we decide to do
business with.