Thursday, January 11, 2007

CES Perspective - Security Issues Being Glossed Over

Anyone following CES is by now overwhelmed with commentary, especially from bloggers. I don't even know where to begin, and haven't ventured much outside my regular sources.

I just wanted to throw one piece into the mix that I would say has been largely overlooked. Shane Schick, who is the Editor of Computing Canada wrote a nice guest piece in today's Globe & Mail that I think is worth drawing attention to. Shane has been writing about tech up here for ages, and knows the terrrain pretty well. He's stepped back from the hype and buzz and offered a sane perspective that I agree with.

In short, he's raising the issue that as consumers adopt all these anywhere, any time, always on gadgets, and begin integrating them across all their endpoints and devices, there is an increased risk of security-related threats that the vendors aren't really talking about. This becomes especially relevant for people who routinely share personal and work information on the same device. Whether it be small business/SOHO operators, or people using large corporate networks, the vendors are touting a rather carefree approach to making the flow of bits and bytes so fluid.

Shane cites a great example with Hitachi's one terabyte hard drive. It's not hard to imagine cases where individuals store all their personal and business information on this gigantic hard drive - but also not taking the necessary precautions to protect it or even back it up. It wouldn't take much for a virus or a worm embedded in a music download to wipe out the data for an entire business if it was stored in the same place.

Well said, and I hope people are listening!


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