Don’t think I want to bluescreen my car!

Well this is a little scary! The tradition with security vulnerability in software and computer hardware has been ‘ship it and fix it later’. For the most part this worked. It was responsive to business and it also realistically didn’t matter a great deal. Yes, your computer application might have a security vulnerability which may or may not be exploited by a bad actor, but even if it was the impact was generally minimal. If it did happen to impact you then you could “purchase support” at a reasonable price and everyone wins (that was probably a bit cynical of me.

However, today more and more lives are depending upon the same vulnerable technology. Will the same methodology of ‘fix it later’ work when we are talking about medical monitoring equipment or vehicles in busy highways? Somehow I think we are talking about a tipping point here where a new paradigm of how we approach this problem needs to be found and found very fast.

Hopefully markets and sense will prevail and find a solution, but if we look at this historically I think we might be in for a rough time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/opinion/internet-hacking-cybersecurity-iot.html 

The New World Order of Privacy

I suspect we will be seeing more of these types of articles in coming months and years. This is essentially the same type of problem that impacts other areas of security from secure software development to encryption; we develop an assurance method and then research (legitimate or otherwise) finds the flaws. The problem I see is that unlike secure software development and encryption, de-identification methods don’t have the same level of maturity. With the current environment of data (especially personal data) being of high value, we are going to need to mature these methods very quickly

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/innovation/australians-health-records-unwittingly-exposed-20171218-p4yxt2.html

Article: Privacy in the digital age is only possible if we act now

Recent article published by Charlie Lewis in Crikey discussing the state of affairs that is information security and privacy in the digital age.

Privacy in the digital age is only possible if we act now 

I think the last paragraph highlights the key issue we have here; privacy advocates don’t seem to be able to agree on the most appropriate way forward.

There should also be some acknowledgement in this discussion that in many ways this discussion is too little too late. So many major businesses rely on the collection and trade of personal information. If we were make any meaningful change in this area, those companies would require a new income and business model.

I am afraid that we have long ago given away our rights for privacy in exchange for convenience.

(Note: new Crikey articles are behind a paywall for the first two weeks after publishing)