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5 ways that technology can help you stay ahead of cybercriminals

By: Brandpoint

April 18, 2023 at 11:01 AM EDT

(BPT) - When Hari Ravichandran's identity was stolen, he was disappointed by the lack of an option for simple, all-in-one, proactive personal protection. A system like that could have saved him the turmoil of dealing with the complications and fallout of identity theft. This inspired him to create an intelligent safety system that proactively protects users instead of reactively addressing safety issues, unlike other online safety tools.

Based on his experience as the founder and CEO of Aura, a leader in consumer online safety, Ravichandran wrote "Intelligent Safety: How to Protect Your Family from Big Cybercrime." This forthcoming book covers the brass tacks of cybercrime and how intelligent safety systems can help keep you and your family safe on the web.

The backbone of intelligent safety - and what makes it different from other online safety approaches - is artificial intelligence (AI). Think of AI as a guardian that shields you online and off and proactively protects you as an individual.

While the human eye can spot many things, digital solutions can be more accurate at identifying meaningful patterns and monitoring and detecting malware even as it changes. An intelligent safety system backed by machine learning allows the system to adapt to the ever-changing nature of these threats and to the user's individual risk level.

Below are four examples of how intelligent safety systems can excel at stopping cybercriminals in their tracks.

1. Automatic password change

Password managers have become very popular, especially in the era of data breaches. Instead of worrying about making a strong, unique password for every site you visit and remembering them, a password manager can generate and store login information for you.

Password managers are even more effective when used with other digital safety features. If, for example, your user information has been breached, the intelligent safety system's AI can review the password linked to that account to assess the risk and use the password manager to find other accounts that might use similar passwords. It can then automatically update them on the at-risk site and within the user's password manager for future use.

2. Smart network

AI has the ability to provide a smart network that uses massive data sets to identify patterns and anomalies in website traffic. For example, most scams occur on websites created and abandoned within 48 hours. That means that a key indicator of whether a website is safe is the date the website was published.

Checking the data on every website you visit is impossible. However, an intelligent safety platform can automatically look at specific features to see when the account was registered and developed. If it sees the site was created 12 hours earlier and is now asking for your credit card information, it can block your access to the site to prevent you from walking into a trap.

3. Scam call assistant

Robocalls and spam texts are pretty high on people's list of annoyances. That's why many companies have created spam call assistants to filter spam phone calls and block the number. However, artificial intelligence can take spam call protection a step further.

If you receive a call from a number that isn't in your contacts, a spam call assistant can answer those calls for you and engage with the caller automatically. The AI system can recognize speech and analyze the natural language to determine if it's a scam. If it's a bot or a criminal using a known scam script that call will be sent to voicemail and marked as spam.

4. Parental controls

Keeping your kids safe online is daunting, but intelligent safety can help. Harnessing the power of AI, an intelligent safety system can be designed to look for curse words or inappropriate content. It can then compile that data and perform content filtering. If a site is known for malicious content, the algorithm can weed that out, too.

Intelligent safety systems can also help protect kids from cyberbullying. According to the Anti-Defamation League, three out of five young people ages 13-17 - representing nearly 14 million young gamers - experienced harassment in online multiplayer games. Kidas' machine learning-based software - included now for all Aura family plan subscribers - uses artificial intelligence to analyze voice and text conversations in 220 popular children's games and automatically detects toxic situations, including sexual harassment, cyberbullying, grooming and racism. Parents receive same-day immediate threat alerts and weekly updates detailing their child's game time.

Intelligent safety in action

Prevention, detection and response are the three levels of digital safety, all of which need to be strong. Then if something slips through at one level the threat can be eliminated before it reaches the next. An intelligent safety system like Aura can empower customers to proactively protect themselves from cybercrime.

To learn more about Aura's all-in-one digital protection, visit Aura.com. If you're interested in reading Ravichandran's book to get ahead on your family's digital safety, visit IntelligentSafetyBook.com.

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5 ways that technology can help you stay ahead of cybercriminals

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