“Is data security the Achilles heel of mobile communications?” I hear you cry. In short, probably not – well, for the moment anyway.
There was an interesting event about data security a few weeks ago where I discovered that banks and security outfits are getting frighteningly sophisticated at combating mobile fraud (good news right?) and the advanced mobile security outfit InAuth will happily chew your ear off about it until you aren’t sure you want a phone anymore.
Hosted by putitout and Diffusion, the event was held at Bold Rocket (great offices by the way) and attended by the crème de la crème of digital enthusiasts and gurus.
This question stood out for me:
Does anyone care about data security?
In the conversation between Ed Hodges (from INAUTH), Charles Cadbury (putitout) and Simon Rockman (The Register | @TheRegister) three strong points of view came out:
- NOBODY cares
- The informed people DO care
- Why does it matter? Ethics will win out
In classic ‘provocateur’ style, my instinct is to interrogate the opinion and challenge it in some way whether I agree or not…
NOBODY Cares
The assumption here is that everyone knows how information is collected and what can be done with the personal (and ‘big’) data that we generate.
I would argue that even the ‘informed’ people probably do not fully understand it all, let alone ‘the masses’, so I’m landing on the side of ignorance / poor education rather than apathy.
The informed people DO care
This is hard to argue as when you know how your data can be used, what can be done with it and who can access it (‘evil’ people / the government, corporations etc) you’ll drop your phone in the nearest body of liquid, pack your bags and disappear off the grid.
There’s even an App that ‘erases you’ and the popularity of DuckDuckGo (the search engine that doesn’t profile you based on collected data) is rising. But then, the absence of data / information indicates behaviour in itself; can you ever truly delete your digital self?
Good old Christopher Nolan comments on this in Batman: The Dark Knight AND John Oliver laughed at the EU’s ruling on Google users’ ‘right to be forgotten’.
I did like what James Fox said on Twitter about providing a narrative / personal experience to help the issue hit close to home and raise its profile:
Interestingly though, it was posed at the event that even if you DID ‘know’, you’ll happily sacrifice your security / data for good utility (e.g. Facebook) and does anyone really know what Apple puts in their T&Cs? Pretty certain I’ve signed away my first born more than once.
Why does it matter? Ethics will win out
This opinion was met with some skepticism, which I found heartbreaking. We have to believe that as individuals we will act responsibly and corporates will be transparent and honest with users about how and where data is used – especially as there are governance frameworks in place to help.
But it’s the eternal good versus evil dilemma – people will exploit the system where they can and we can only do our best to fight the good fight.
What does this mean to me?
Fraud will happen. Just make sure there are procedures in place to fix any breaches and believe me, the good fight is definitely being fought.
The State (spies will be spies) and corporates can access the digital you AND the analogue you (which you can’t do too much about right now) but…
… DON’T PANIC.
Get informed (you’ll feel better) and don’t do anything you wouldn’t want ‘The Man’ to find out about!
#pitoevent #datasecurity