Retail asset protection professionals are no longer responsible only for the protection of physical assets. More and more, criminal activity centers on the theft of information—whether that data is personal, financial, or even intellectual property or business-related. It behooves us, as AP and LP pros, to know where data protection issues are likely to begin so that we know where investigations need to start when hacking inevitably occurs.
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Editorial Director Jac Brittain, LPC, explores this topic in detail in an article for the most recent issue of LPM Online. In the article, Brittain delineates the difference between the “surface web,” or what is visible to Internet users via a search engine, the “deep web,” which contains information that cannot be indexed by a search engine, and the “dark web,” which is where many data protection issues originate. From the article:
One common misconception about the dark web and the deep web is that the two terms are interchangeable. This is simply not true. The dark web makes up only a very small part of the deep web, although sometimes the terms are mistakenly used interchangeably. It’s most famously been used for the sale of stolen credit card numbers, black market drug sales, weapons, child pornography, and even murder‐for‐hire. When people discuss the seedy underbelly of the Internet where you can buy basically any illicit item or service you could dream up, that’s the dark web.
“When I am trying to describe the dark web to clients, I typically use the Silk Road (an ancient network of trade routes) as an example. It’s the place where criminals gather and exchange information, products, and services, and transact illegal business,” said Erin Fonte, member with Dykema Gossett and co‐head of the firm’s privacy and data security group.
Learn more about how criminals access the dark side of the Internet for illicit activities in “Cyber Crime: The Dark Truth for Retailers.”
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