“Awful Event. President Lincoln Shot by an Assassin”
Thus read the
headline of the New York Times on April 15, 1865, the morning after Abraham Lincoln was
left unguarded, proving fatal and forever changing history. After researching
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the fatal event begged this question in my
mind “where was the Secret Service?!” Where was the security, the extra level
of protection, the awareness of potential danger? For starters, the Secret
Service does not take on the responsibility to protect the president until
1902, and at the time of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, there is only a group of
four police officers charged with protecting the president, each taking turns.
Protecting the president was lax and often overlooked, the perfect storm for
trouble.
On the night
of Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater, there was only one charged with
protecting the president, the unsuitable officer John Parker. Known for his
fowl language and drunken behavior on duty, he seemed an unlikely candidate to
protect anyone, let alone president Lincoln. Seeing his chance to grab a drink
during the intermission of Our American
Cousin, leaving the president unguarded and vulnerable to his assassinator,
John Wilkes Booth.
Data assassination
“Today it’s
hard to believe that a single policeman was Lincoln’s only protection, but 145
years ago the situation wasn’t that unusual,” truthfully stated by Smithonian.com author Paul Martin. In many ways, we can draw a similar parallel
on data security in today’s society. I believe we will look back at this time
in history and say something like, “it’s difficult to believe that a single
password was our data’s only protection, but it was not uncommon for the
general public to have only a password to login to their accounts.”
Just like the
weak, half-hearted protection of the president left him vulnerable to being
assassinated on that fateful night of April 14, 1865, leaving valuable
information, aka our ingenious creativity, scantly protected with the smallest aura
of apathetic concern does not make the cut. This laxity leads data
assassination right before your eyes, helpless to do anything but watch as all
is commandeered, ransomed, and plagiarized.
Apathy is a poison
Rotting the
very foundations of the strongest beliefs and movements. Helen Keller said it
best “science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy
for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.” Disregarding data
breaches (no matter what kind of data is breached) as the sole responsibility
and concern of large corporations is naïve and a sure path to disaster. The
data we leave exposed to the assassin can never be regained as privately owned
by ourselves alone.
Data is powerful
A case study
by Harvard students Karim Lakhani, Robert Austin, and Yumi Yi on Data.gov
points out the importance of data and how we as a people are empowered when we are able to
use data to it’s fullest. “Encourage people to use the data-in any of the
infinite number of inventive ways ingenious citizens might dream up,
potentially unleashing new innovations and business ideas. Harness the wisdom
of crowds . . . to achieve objects far beyond those government organizations.” Tim
Berners-Lee also places data in a place of honor and strength by quoting, “Data
is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves;”
therefore, data should and must be protected.
A password alone is not enough
Whether that
is through a Single Sign-on solution with a second-factor for your login or
anit-malware software for your desktop, you must protect your data from those
that would seek to destroy or plagiarize our data. Our innovations and ideas
combined, as a whole, is more powerful than a government at large. Don’t let the
data that empowers us or our innovations be assassinated!
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