The revolution is here. Every successful, major revolution in history had two primary sides to it, those who benefited and the previously empowered. The Internet was not created for the masses, or by a consortium of the general public with your best interests considered. The previously empowered general public is in many ways now victims of computer systems, particularly relative to the internet.
Its use has always favored the most highly resourced and skilled. And, applicable software and hardware development are always expanding, even faster than we can learn and benefit from the prior iterations. It is like opening endlessly nested dolls. Moreover, companies are constantly attempting to outperform each others’ products regarding functional characteristics (size, speed, capacity, mobility, brilliance, ease of application, interface, connectivity, security, etc.), and beat their competitors to sales. The beneficiaries are usually the best-marketed products, the losers are those of us living with and occasionally burned by, unmet functional promises.
Subpar performance of computer system components occurs regularly for many reasons. Plus, data leaks, hacked data, and other information losses occur purposefully, erroneously and are spilled into the public arena by public agencies, private businesses, and hackers daily as unfortunate elements of the revolution in our information access and use.
However, the true risk has never been made clear to the public. Most of the general public simply does not understand what they can and cannot expect from personal and business systems, and have few reasonable options regarding the performance of a related business. Who would have expected a financial corporation that earns substantially more than a billion dollars in annually, with approximately 9,000 employees in fourteen countries, and traded on the NYSE to not take exquisite care of data entrusted to it? And, what new college graduate who is constantly bombarded by corporate psychological panel applications would believe that a company to which they are applying has top management that gave themselves a four-month window through which to parachute before letting the remainder of the world would know about their corporate data breach problems – imagine the volumes of stock and options these corporate leaders sold to avoid their devaluation. Most people will simply be able to add to their epitaphs – “Here lies ____. S/he always believed that the wolves in sheep’s clothing were actually sheep.”
We all attempt to travel the internet safely. But, regarding cybersecurity, if anyone ever tells you that your ______ (any type of data) is completely safe on their server(s), in their cloud system or with their specific software, smile and contemplate, “I wish their pants would actually catch on fire!”
We are just one of many of you who spend a significant amount of time and money online, all deserving safe platforms upon which to work.
