Digital Security Discussion

Topic of discussion in my Enterprise Models class tonight: Digital Security.  Something I touched on earlier this year.

Our text postulated: "Increasingly opening up their networks and applications to customers, partners, and suppliers using an ever more diverse set of computing devices and networks, businesses can benefit from deploying the latest advances in security technologies."

My Professor said: "My thoughts on this are opposite: by opening up your network, you are inviting trouble and the more trouble you invite in, the more your data will be at risk. I understand what they are hinting at, with a cloud based network, the latest security technologies are always available, therefore, in theory, your data is more secure. Everyone needs to keep in mind though, that for every security patch developed, there are ways around them."

He went on to mention how viruses could affect the cloud as a whole and that companies and individuals moving to cloud-based platforms will become the next target for cyber attacks as the model continues to thrive.

Which is all relevant, however I have a different perspective on digital security. My counter argument to that is user education is the key. I have debated this topic, security and system users, many times over the years. Like most of us in the industry information security is paramount. With the multiple terabytes of data we collect in our home systems, and even more in online interactions, keeping our data safe is really our last defense in privacy and security. As more companies and individuals implant their corporate and personal data upon cloud platforms there is an uneasy sense of comfort for many people, including some seasoned pros. Companies like Google and Microsoft whom both have highly successful cloud models across the board have taken responsibility for ensuring they have more than adequate digital and physical security in their data centers, which to an extent leaves it to assumption that the data and applications they warehouse and host are generally safe from intrusion. Users are the key to this whole ecosystem we have created. This is where user education becomes critical. As most seasoned techies know, in the beginning systems and system operations were highly technical in nature and only the most highly trained or technically creative individuals could initiate and manipulate computer systems. Viruses were something you caught from kids at school or coworkers, not a daily blitz of digital infections numbering in the hundreds of millions perpetually attacking in various forms. As systems got more complex in design but simpler in use the users technical ability level eventually became irrelevant. People ages 1 to 100, and even some very well trained animals, can all navigate systems and digital networks with very little effort. Our systems now do all the work for us, users simply need to provide basic instructions and gentle manipulations, instead of hard coding instruction sets and inventive on-the-fly program generation as was the status quo in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. This idle user perspective is the reason why criminal hackers are still traversing firewalls and breaking encryption algorithms, and they are growing in numbers as is evident by the number of new malware detections and infections quantified annually across all digital platforms and all continents. Educating users on general best practices for system use and maintenance, how to identify potential scams, how to detect spoofing and malformed websites, what to avoid when reading emails or reviewing search results, and which security software is functionally the best whether free or paid is critically important today more than it has ever been. The problem is that the industry has created the lazy user by essentially conveying that security is a given. Microsoft even made a concerted effort by including the Windows Firewall and Windows Defender as a part of its operating system by default so that there was some protection for their users out of the box. This was in response to a large number of users, whom had been infected by one or more viruses, that assumed they were protected because "it's from Microsoft, it has to be safe" which was further from the truth than they could understand. As an educated user that knows how to secure systems and networks, I take it upon myself to ensure that users appreciate they have to set a passwords when logging into various systems and services. I teach about the importance for digital security and how to be more security conscious with their every day interactions. I teach them how to correctly navigate Internet search results (avoiding "ads"), how to understand various security prompts and what they look like so they don't ignore them, what security solutions should be installed and how to identify them, etc. This improved knowledge has created a culture of awareness for my users both at work and at home. I am regularly consulted by my peers on how to secure their own families and how to explain it to their children. This creates a more intelligent user and thereby creates a more intelligent user community at large, making the Internet a bit more secure. All of that said, it only takes a single character missing from source code to give a programmer the ability to break the program and cause havoc, or a user inadvertently installing malware. Even the most seasoned users make these mistakes from time to time because we are all human, and as such we are fundamentally flawed, making no security solution 100% secure because they are developed and used by humans. Best you can do is make every effort to educate and secure, and hope no one targets you because if they want to get in bad enough, they will get in and you won't be able to stop them.

~Geek