Hacking is just one tool. They'll hang out at the pub, pose as a telephone repairman or ride the elevator to pick up on conversations. The pros, he says, will sort through garbage cans and scan documents looking for key nuggets for their clients, usually the competition. And hackers like Maxim, of course, are the poster boys used to sell e-business bigger and better security protocols. But that's not enough in itself.
Consumers also have a major role to play to make sure they're safe.
Anderson says dealing with well-established companies lessens the chance of your data becoming compromised. Of course, all of this is fine in theory. It's when the human factor comes into play that things go wrong. Unqualified and uncertified Web designers don't often bolt the door down tight enough. Sometimes the problem is as simple as not locking up after they've been into a site to work on it, and sometimes they neglect to change the factory-installed default passwords when they install systems, he says.