WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

Part of a brainstorming exercise by the Foreign Affairs Minister of Australia. 

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Not having to carry papers and documents with you is always a good idea. We do it for our personal information and contacts, our emails, calendars, documents and pictures, and soon with our money (apple pay, google wallet, etc.). Moving to the cloud for your government identification makes perfect sense as well. 

Security will need to be bullet proof, but given the number of stolen or lost passports (due mostly to human error I am sure), I would bet that technology would do a much better job.

Concerning privacy and global surveillance, that's a different story...

Explains how a teenager was able to fool VErizon and AOL employees into giving him access to CIA director email account.

This shows that the weak link in all of our technology remains the people. The solution thus is not more technology or information security restrictions (because everyone will bypass them anyways), but rather better education and technology that is transparent so that people don't bypass it or make insecure by their actions.

Boarding pass barcodes contain a lot of private and personally identifiable information. Krebs provides an account of what that information allows you to find on the boarding pass holder. 

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Very private information is often stored in plain sites on things that we do not even think about trowing in the garbage. Let's be careful!

SilentCircle is the company behind the Blackphone and is now launching software and services, not only devices.

I wrote about the blackphone before and why it matters: http://www.scoop.it/t/digital-transformation-of-businesses?q=blackphone

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

The niche of extreme privacy and extreme secrecy will grow, as user and organizations are willing to pay a premium for security and privacy. Blackberry had the upper hand in this, not sure where they'll be in the future but it would make sense for them to consolidate this emerging market.

Also read: https://gigaom.com/2015/03/02/silent-circle-shows-off-more-powerful-blackphone-2-privacy-phone/

A good visual summary of recent data breaches.

A project has been devised to map all internet of things devices in the Austin Texas area, and identify vulnerabilities. Cool demonstrations of what you can do with a drone and some technology skills.

See the full map here:

https://www.praetorian.com/iotmap/ 

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT?

There will be 9B IoT devices soon and many more in the future. Great opportunities but it needs to be safe and private.

A review of what we know about the data breach.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT

Interesting to see how pirates distribute their loot and wha constitutes valuable information, other than credit card numbers.

What is most interesting here I believe are these stats:

- thousands of fake female profiles

- 90-95% of actual users are male

Speaks volume on the anonymity of the Internet and the lack of reliable information out there.

Also read this most insightful post on the Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/19/9178855/ashley-madison-data-breach-implications

This is getting very personal.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT?

Most people would not even think about tracking their every move and data like the quantified self movement is promoting. However, we are providing more and more of our intimate data to our apps and websites, as evidenced by these apps, some of which come pre-installed on iPhones. This is bound to raise privacy issues in the future.

Reporter has gone to dark web to find out that user information of quality is worth almost 100$.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT?

There is an opportunity for a company to start charging higher fees to collect and protect your digital identity. Today it seems Apple may be gearing towards that model: you pay more for its services than Google, Amazon, Facebook and others but they - as far as we know - do not sell your data.

Insurance company offers bluetooth toothbrushes to clients to reduce their premiums - if they brush well.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Big data and digital connected things have the potential to transform entire industries and it looks like the insurance industry is one of them. With Desjardins ajusto mobile app (http://www.desjardins.com/ca/personal/insurance/car-insurance/ajusto/) good drivers get up to 25% premium discounts, Oscar fitbit tracker users get lower premiums as well (and the startup gets a crazy 15B$ valuation http://www.businessinsider.com/oscar-raises-145-million-at-a-15-billion-valuation-2015-4), the trend appears to be clear: give us access to your data and we'll give you a better deal.

No surprise in the data: people go to bed late on xmas and new year and wake up later the next morning. But the difference in each country seems to demonstrate that Americans don't party a lot and that French party more than many others. Here again, no surprise... ;-)

A short account of the level of sophistication that computer viruses have achieved. And a video that pleades for the need to keep computers secure.

This analysis is very in depth and looks at many different angles to show how and why we pick simple passwords. I continue to be amazed by the lack of proper passwords being used by people in general.

This study is recent but I assume things may change quite rapidly and solutions such as lastpass or password box are helping change this trend.

Also I assume this applies well to the USA but may be different in Canada, Quebec and elsewhere due to differences in language and culture.

Also consider reading: Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can't Protect Us Anymore | Gadget Lab | Wired.com