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I'd love to be able to have trust - wouldn't you?

More often we see evidence of our collective inability to fend off internet criminals in our life no matter how many temporary fixes and patches we put in place.  Refer here for an example yesterday.

We invent encryption to the power of 256 bits that can be broken; we have interactive challenge and response techniques that can be copied; we have one time tokens that are as secure as the pocket that the device is carried in; virus scanners which are never current and always after the fact remedial; we have digital signatures, voice recognition, facial recognition, fingerprints...the list goes on. 

For every preventative measure, criminals have an answer.  A professional pickpocket will even substitute an object in your pocket for the one they take so that you don't know it's missing...amazing but true. Cyber criminals are just as sharp and more, believe it!

For every person working on preventative measures, there are seven times that many people working out the best way of breaking them and of course, their investment consists of unlimited time, skills and money.  We know this for certain...it isn't hard to see why.

Criminals see the internet as a treasure trove of infinite riches.  The smartest are creaming money as we speak and we will never know how much money they have taken, or how much harm they have caused until it's far too late.  Terrorists are using Twitter...oh what a surprise...where are you now?  "Oh I'm at the bread shop about to have a feed"...which could be code for "being ready for action" or may just be a hungry twitterer at lunch...who would know?

The weaknesses in our service providers are all too apparent.  They are mainly people based.  Who watches the person who watches the person who puts his own chip in the device at the manufacturing plant, or line splitter at the exchange, or copies the backup media?  Is anyone prone to bribery in any part of the service delivery chain?  This includes communications of course...and of course the answer is always "yes".

So we need someone we can trust...that's the only way forward.  We need a service that we can absolutely rely upon to be our protection.  It requires a qantum change in thinking.  No more waste on patchwork solutions that are guaranteed to fail.  Our problem is too great for a tactical response.  We need a strategic fix.  The people we elected to govern and protect us need to respond to the existing position of criminal superiority by establishing TRUST. 

Cyber crime is permeating every aspect of our lives including national security...cyber crime is here now and it's accelerating, why?  Because it's winning big time!.    

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Comments: (1)

A Finextra member
A Finextra member 05 December, 2008, 05:07Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

I'm with you there on that one Steve. I know we keep seeing bigger numbers in everything but those fraud figures and the associated costs just keep on growing.

While we are at it we should make it trust that everone can use.

The real benefit in having TRUST  - that we can all use, would be the way we could streamline a lot of the everyday things we do and enable us to interact more safely - even with strangers. The general comfort levels would go up while the worry and hassle  levels would go down which might see people being a little more relaxed.

I'm thinking more relaxed about interacting with strangers,  police or government.  Every little bit helps in these times.

There is a lot more to life than just money transactions as we see illustrated here and in social networking and, while we are not using a ubiquitous trust mechanism, we are stumbling around in the dark taking pot lock and being taken.

Streamlining the identity process in a way which removes the need for prying and forms of documentation that few can verify anyway seems like a no brainer to me.

If we can improve privacy while providing better security and trust and reduce the discomfort and costs of that essential part of interacting, establishing trust, that sounds like a definite recipe for success.

It's probably worth much more than all the fraudsters could ever hope to steal and it effectively ends their reign as well, a definite bonus.

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