The era of cyber tsars

May 27th, 2009 by Olga Koksharova
Category: «General», «Security»

It seems like monarchy is to reign in the cyber world. During the last weeks mass media heavily speak about the need of finding a proper authority who will be responsible for electronic information security issues: Obama seeks one for the White House, whereas EU commissioner for information society and media (Viviane Reding) announces that "Europe needs a ‘Mister Cyber Security’ as we have a ‘Mister Foreign Affairs’, a security tsar with authority to act immediately if a cyber attack is underway.

Data theft is surely underway (at least judging by the frequency of laptop theft) and often only quick and exact actions can help. Existing critical data destruction techniques like one developed by Fujitsu can remotely delete data from a stolen laptop even when it’s off, however the opportunity to use such things is open not to every laptop holder. Apparently, something else should be done to protect valuable data or prevent it from going into adversary’s hands.

At least educate (!) people about how to correctly treat their portable data carriers, so that no adversary could get the information even if the laptop was stolen. We put the highest priority on the maxim of knowledge and feel ourselves as a part of this community anxious about cyber security. We also deeply hope that new tsars, whoever they will be, will thoroughly develop security policy and encourage the idea of making people knowledgeable rather than experienced.