Logic Evasion

Pondering Information Security
As time goes by, the fundamentals of Information Security is something that almost everyone will eventually encounter. I remember back in grade school they had us students come up with passwords for our library accounts. It wasn't long after people slowly started realizing the value of this bit of memory. Forgetting passwords, losing passwords written down, having simple passwords, the consequences of an unintended person accessing resources that password protected...

Beyond the notion of not letting other people know your passwords, it's not common that the average person has a strong grasp on their own digital security. I keep hearing that, for organizations, the weakest link when it comes to security are the uneducated employees. Solutions to this are divided, ranging from finding some third party to provide short lectures, to stupid fake phishing email tests, to even throwing the burden of responsibility on the IT team to create secure systems that can account for user error. Management ticking boxes, finger pointing games after security compromises, what a mess. I'm not too worried about organizations, but rather the individuals whose poor security practices seep into their daily lives.

I remember when I first got tricked into downloading and executing 'malicious software'. As a naive young teenager, way back in the Diablo 2 days, I joined a 'free dupes' game where the person told me that downloading this program would allow me to dupe my items. It turned out to be a program that made my character drop items, and in a panic I quickly shut down my computer. That was my first experience that not all Internet strangers were nice people.

Now in the present, we have cyber criminals enabled by crytocurrencies to extort and state-sponsored actors siphoning world secrets. We have parents location tracking their children and even worse, stalkers and ex-lovers tracking and snooping into others' digital lives. We have millions of IoT devices with default configurations whose control is constantly being fought over. We've grown accustomed to locking our doors and putting our valuables in safe places, and the world needs this same familiarity with the digital world.