Information Control
On a daily basis there are likely to be several points when you are asked to surrender your data to someone, and each of those several points will most likely be matched with an assurance that your security is assured.
When you are handing over your data to a social media platform you may not think too much about, but if you are doing something a little bit more official, and you plug in your social security number or driver’s license you might give a little bit more of a pause before you hit the submit button, to check around the site and see that it is safe.
What if you don’t know who you are submitting to, or what the extent of the permissions you have just given are, or the site which you think looks like an official instrument of the state, is actually a private company? What protections are afforded you?
When you find out that Cambridge Analytica are suspended from Facebook and say they no longer retain the data that they obtained in breach of Facebook rules, but that the data was used to affect the way the internet behaved for a large number of people, how are you supposed to feel?
When Equifax was revealed to have allowed the data of 143 million people to be compromised, what were the consequences for them? A golden handshake for the man heading up the company, and then a large contract with the IRS for the country?
Information is becoming supremely important, perhaps more than ever, because the tools to disseminate to the masses really are there at your fingertips. It looks like a lot of the manipulation carried out has been done by means of merely exploiting already existing systems, and just doing it better and on a larger scale than anyone thought possible. So you want to educate yourself about the possible dangers, and do all you can to make sure you don’t get caught out.
You can use information to drive people around. Think about the cold war, and in many cases it was the information being traded by spies that was the most dangerous thing. How is this different to the current climate? Information is one of the first things to get suppressed, and the sources of that information are hit first. The concept of controlling the narrative is common parlance. Whistleblowers are valuable, Sources are the lifeblood of journalism, and the transmitting of information is an essential facet of any culture.
On a personal basis you aim to choose what to share about yourself. For your company you want to make sure that the information you share is positive, and that if you have any listings the data is correct. There are tools that allow you to use the data your sites generate, and target bits of information that you want to share to different people or groups of people. The tools are out there, and they can be used for either good or bad purposes. We like to help people, and our expanding knowledge of security, and the the utilization of all the technology available to best use data, helps us to achieve that goal.
The control of anything comes with taking responsibility for it, and increasing your knowledge of what it is and how to operate it. As you increase any of these factors your control of information will be greater. As people suffer the fallout of their information being abused, they are going to become more responsible in how they manage it. Knowing that the potential is there for it to be abused, you can be proactive, and you can be proactive in creating a similar experience for anyone you might work with.
The reason a lot of the press about this seems so doom and gloom is because they give you the problem, but they fail to give you any kind of solution. There are solutions, and sure, they aren’t foolproof, but you can do a lot. Expect the best and prepare for the worst is a very sensible philosophy. It is as big a problem as we allow it to be.
