We all need to begin thinking differently about how we secure our critical infrastructure, no matter what country you’re in. It’s the center of gravity in any future conflict, implies Scott Borg, director and chief economist of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit. Everything about the Internet has changed security needs, and, for a fact, the way that it now works has made securing everything more difficult.
Any high-value asset in any country, everything from an electric grid or a uranium processing plant to a hydro dam or a government research facility, will be targeted in future conflicts. To put it simply, our current methods for securing these areas are not only outdated, but they are being undermined on a daily basis. Just last year Los Alamos National Labs, which is arguably the most important and influential research facility in the US, reported 13 computers lost or stolen and another 67 missing in the past year. One can only imagine how much intellectual property and national security information was lost. How is this possible? It’s because the systems they have in place are plagued with systemic problems.
The new security system that we are presenting to the world will attach a biometric tag to all activity, creating stronger ways to audit personnel. This will fix the problems that are so apparent in current practices, specifically the problems surrounding Identity and Location. We have designed a user-centric identity system that is both mobile and persistent. Wouldn’t you want to know what everybody is doing inside the nuclear facility, at any time you choose, no matter what work is being done by that person? We would, and not only that, we would want to know where they did it, what files they opened, and what changes were made to them. To our company, this should be a basic requirement for all critical infrastructure, no matter the country.
The ideas here represent a response to “Hiroshima, 2.0″ which came out in WSJ, April 24, 2009. It’s worthwhile reading this article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123966785804815355.html
Tags: Biometrics, Future, innovation, Internet, Plantiga, Security
