Ease of Deployment is the Key

I got up Sunday morning and after a brief bike ride looked at the local Sunday paper. An article on the front page caught my eye. The title of the article was “Few options available for those concerned about NSA intrusions”. The article referenced experts who state with the capabilities and polices of the NSA consumers have few choices, we are more exposed to criminal hackers, sophisticated users who take precautions are still exposed and most people are essentially powerless. The efforts of the NSA have weakened our security exposing us to criminals and foreign governments. Since we cannot determine the vulnerabilities there a few steps we can take to ensure our privacy is not compromised. This is indeed a bleak picture.

However, the article did not sufficiently explore the real situation. There are steps sophisticated users can take. Consumers can encrypt their local drive. They can take measures to ensure personal communication is done with some sort of encryption technology. You should also us commercially available anti-virus and anti-malware solutions. Consumers should be smart when accessing network information. Do not expose personal information on social media sites. For a lot of people this will protect your personal information. However, it is a pain in the ass. It is a lot of work and you need to regularly update your security technology.

For the longest time the security business has not listened to the user community. Security is just too hard. What the user community needs is a solution that raises the security bar and at the same time significantly reduces the complexity of deployment and day to day use. Stay tuned….