Increasing your own knowledge is your best defense. As you learn the practical information about how computer criminals gain unauthorized access, you can employ better means of protection. Information about you including financial information and account numbers, medical history, race, and marital status is probably stored on computing equipment somewhere. Most organizations have their computing equipment connected to the Internet. Any functionality that you have using a computer can potentially be exploited.
Internet connected computers have bugs and features that can be exploited by remote computers.
In some cases this means someone impersonating you electronically, or in other cases depriving others from access which is called denial of service. Denial of service attacks are the electronic equivalent of vandalism. This is a practical example of what we can do to protect the integrity of our systems. While some users say that they have nothing in their account or email, they may not realize that a perpetrator can use their account as a lever to gain unauthorized access to other UO systems and Internet connected systems. We have a collective responsibility to help protect our systems and other Internet connected systems.