The future of security and privacy should be focused on the person and the impact upon them.
Speaking to Infosecurity at the DigiCert Security Summit in San Diego, DigiCert CEO John Merrill said that security is about privacy and trust, and who is on the other side, and there is more awareness of privacy thanks to regulations like GDPR.
“Look at it from a global sense, the technology is outpacing a lot of people’s understanding of and government’s ability to deal with it,” he said. “Look at facial recognition issues, we’ve just found out that companies have been keeping data with facial recognition stored on their servers: how do we handle that? The answer is that we are more aware of it and the technologies are there in some cases, for the internet we seem to be doing a pretty good job.”
Merrill went on to say that “technology is evolving faster than our ability to cope with it,” so are we therefore struggling to chase an impossible dream of protection? “Whether it is impossible or not, it is a worthy goal as the majority of users on the internet are safe because of the protocols that have been put in place over the last 20-30 years,” he said. “So they are not 100% safe, but as technology evolves, you’re going to have items that you have to deal with from a security and privacy standpoint.
“We may be behind with technology, but that does not mean you should stop running to try and figure it out.”
Merrill added that people should be the focus of security and privacy, whether it is with facial recognition or with their ability to use the internet, or go to the bank or use a phone, it is something that we have to do.