Dinner with Former NSA head of technology

Was a really interesting talk. Discussed how active the Chinese, North Koreans, and Iranians are in trying to manipulate the banking systems. They steal billions of dollars a year from banking institutions from credit fraud and stealing identity of individuals who are not secure in their banking. A couple things that jumped out at me were:

iphones are some of the best ways to do business. Always, always update to the new patches and upgrades. Often the hackers get the patches, figure out what the patch fixed and what it was trying to avoid and try to manipulate the people who have not done so.

If you are investing or doing online banking, bank with one of the 9 major ones... Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan...etc They go through 500 million a year in anti terrorist expenditures to keep up with threats. Don;t want to go through a situation like equifax did

Avoid writing checks at all costs. Banking and routing numbers on on every check. One of the main causes of fraud

[b]Have a separate computer on a separate router for all your financial transactions. Do not use this computer for anything else, ever. Use another for any sort of other internet activity. Do not allow friends on the same router

Change the router password from the original.

Do not use a Chinese or russian antivirus software such as kasperski. She stressed this. She said use something like windows defender.

Also something we are all guilty of she said do not use same or similar passwords. And she said use a software that autogenerates passwords.

Was a really interesting conversation. She said how aggressive foreign countries are at attacking banking. Said at age 10, North Korean children are given aptitude tests for hacking. If the they succeed they train them from that age to crack code. Said everyone's social security, mothers maiden name, drivers license is on the deep web and available.

Get credit reports as often as you can.

Just found it interesting. Thought I would share.