Nithin Kamath said a simple two-factor authentication reduces the odds of being a victim of cyber fraud significantly.
Under the two-factor authentication, the first factor in a login is a password, but it has the risk of being easily compromised. The second is an additional factor to secure your account, which has biometric authorization, TOTP (time-based expiring codes) etc. This makes account compromise much harder.
“Everyone is a target today, especially businesses, since hacks can be financially lucrative. Almost all companies would have faced some cyber fraud attempts. Not taking preventive action means it is just a matter of time,” Kamath said.
Kamath, CEO and co-founder of India’s leading brokerage, said one should never be overconfident and should always be paranoid about security. He went on to list out the simple steps that Zerodha takes to be less vulnerable to cyber frauds.
“All internal employee systems at Zerodha have two-factor authentication. Strict role based access. Everyone gets least access and least privilege by default. Nothing is connected to the internet by default and access is over zero trust networks. Even incoming external email for employees is only available where necessary,” Kamath said.
“Botnet and DDoS protection in front of all internet facing systems. Real Time monitoring and analysis systems. Almost the entire employee base including non-technical folks use Linux desktops to reduce the attack surface. Yeah, I have switched as well. I use Zorin (Linux). The shift was smooth since a browser is what I use the most,” he added.Kamath, who is known for his educational tweets on all things stock markets, said constant vigilance, good tech and non-tech practices, awareness about the risks, the steps we can take can constantly reduce attack surfaces.
“We continue to be paranoid and afraid. In a world of NFTs, crypto, AI, the metaverse, etc., we need to be almost paranoid about all digital interactions. Also, to always remember that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is,” he said.
Tweet link: https://twitter.com/Nithin0dha/status/1679811167223422980?t=yWWhTXb2FFIe-d_p52_5yA&s=08
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