Not long ago, there was an interesting article in Smithsonian Magazine "Cassandra Syndrome" in the April 2012 issue. No it was nothing you hadn't heard before, but it did shed some philosophical light on a very serious topic - cyberwar, privacy, computer viruses, and proprietary information loss amongst other things. Indeed, all leaks in the dam or great wall seems to lead to our largest Asian trading partner. Okay so let's talk.
The other day, I was talking to an IT professional, and I asked a simple question; "Do you agree that one of the biggest challenges right now is the lackadaisical attitude of employees downloading "apps" for their personal tech devices which they also use to log into the corporate IT system? Judging by the news and the uptick of hacking attacks as Apple for instance was allowing 1000s of new apps to be loaded into their catalog daily - well that seemed to be too much for coincidence.
At a time when we are being ripped off blind by Chinese corporate espionage, Russian Spies, Israeli spies, etc, etc, it would seem that corporations, especially high-tech, or those with proprietary process knowledge in manufacturing, or substantial R&D investment would be wiser. Again, lots of finger pointing there, thus, I recommend that you read that article cited above, I am not saying anything I haven't read about in the mainstream media, none of this is secret, it's all a reality in the present period.
Now then, with this all known, shouldn't the IT system have layered barriers for those accessing through personal tech devices not issued by the company, and one-time temporary authentication passes with a quick scan for malware prior to access. And how can the Cloud guarantee safety if the users from the corporation are so loose with their rules? And lastly, with the advent of quantum'esque computing how can anything really be all that safe moving forward.
Further, the way I see it, well it gets rather serious for instance when the USAF decides that iPads are okay for logistics pilots in the cockpit as navigational aids, I mean what other apps also are loaded on those iPads? One landing and use at a foreign airport with unsecured internet access, other than on the secured military servers and the device has been compromised. If those devices are giving away operational intelligence, locations, flights, times, etc. that's uncool.
There's just too much information available to keep secrets or keep our team safe these days - meaning the other option is to overload the system with so much information (misdirection) that it becomes impossible to filter out the reality - still, too much misdirection all at once, that just raises eyebrows on the "chatter scale" thus, tipping off that something is up, and unfortunately thus, when it really matters to keep things mellow.
The article I mentioned does have an interesting quote in it; "America's counter terrorism Chief Richard Clarke says that the cyber war has already begun," and even suggest that; we might be losing. Well stated, I concur. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Internet Safety Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/
