Ground Zero

Global

With individual savings rates, personal debt and bankruptcies soaring, there are a number of reasons consumers should be curtailing the use of their credit cards. However, after reading Zero Day Threat: The Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity, you might consider laying off the plastic entirely.

The book, released by Sterling Publishing on April 1st, and written by Hawaii-born and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Byron Acohido and technology writer Jon Swartz, chronicles how the never-ending pursuit to speed up financial transactions has made consumers vulnerable to a host of increasingly sophisticated cyber criminals, who are stealing more than $100 billion a year.

Each of the book’s chapters is organized into three different and recurring sections, “the exploiters” (the cyber crooks), “the enablers” (credit card companies, banks and credit bureaus) and “the expediters” (the good and bad technologists who are continually probing tech systems to find weaknesses). The result is a surprisingly compelling narrative that reads like a combination crime story/cyber thriller, which seems to end like a horror movie.

“The disturbing thing about this problem continues to grow as the technology grows,” says Damien Memorial School graduate Acohido, who is currently a Seattle-based investigative reporter. “Banks, tech and telecom companies have to sacrifice some of the convenience they are providing to consumers in exchange for more security. Instead, with every new technology comes more open doors and windows.”

Acohido began investigating computer viruses and cyber crime while covering Microsoft for USA Today nearly six years ago. After years of writing about the vulnerabilities of the country’s credit card and banking system, is Acohido a cash-only kind of guy? Not exactly.

“I use my credit card all the time, but I don’t use my debit card anymore,” says Acohido. “The credit companies are aware of the scope of the problem, so when you call them alerting them of theft, they will quickly cancel it and issue another one. If it’s your debit card, you’re out of luck, because that’s your money.”

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