War is Changing: Digital Authentication and Security Solutions

War is changing.  We’ve talked about this before, but the state of war between nations is evolving every day. What once was a sequence of battles between armies, marching in line towards each other, has now become a digital minefield of secrecy, deception, and cyber attacks.  It’s one of the age-old ideas for inventors and other entrepreneurs: give me something that will make life easier, and I’ll show you the next great weapon.  Recently, the White House (you know, the place where all of the people that run things tend to go) was victim of a long-standing, brutal cyber attack.  Sure, the various sources say that nothing ‘Top Secret’ was made available to the public or the attackers, but that doesn’t do much to make me feel better.  I don’t know about you, but I’m left wondering: what did they get? I guess, in a way, the next leap my mind makes is towards digital authentication and security solutions. 

Digital Authentication and Security Solutions: Building a Stronger Foundation

You’re not the President, though (if you are, Hey Mr. Obama! Leave us a comment!).  That doesn’t mean that the same principals and issues don’t apply to you.  Technology is growing so rapidly, that science fiction is becoming science fact, and the next innovation is only a small brainstorm away.  It’s an amazing time to be alive.

It’s also very dangerous. 

Digital authentication and security solutions should be a primary concern for everyone; from the individual sipping coffee and looking at Facebook on their couch, to the businessman pulling his financial records from his local server.  Just recently, the NY Times published an article on Keeping Your Car Safe From Electronic Thieves where the danced around the idea I’m driving at here.  The author of the article reports on a series of car break-ins that all happened to occur involving vehicles with keyless entry. 

That’s a more recent bit of technology that has been lauded as making lives so much easier and convenient for early adopters.  Lo and behold, for under $100, car thieves have found a way to bypass the locking mechanisms and enter the car without breaking a sweat. 

“Mr. Danev said that when the teenage girl turned on her device, it amplified the distance that the car can search, which then allowed my car to talk to my key, which happened to be sitting about 50 feet away, on the kitchen counter. And just like that, open sesame.”

That’s the world we live in today: Convenience is amazing, but it also represents a risk. That's why digital authentication and security solutions are all the buzz in recent years.

I can’t help you much with your car (though the NY Times has a good idea about putting your keys in the freezer), but I can give you some advice about other areas of your digital life. 

So, Where do We Go From Here?

I’m a proponent for technological advancement, and I think both technology and hackers have their uses in that grand schemata.  Digital security and authentication solutions provide a way for all of us as both individuals and businesses to find a secure place in that realm.  The most significant first step that you can take? Educate yourself.

            What to know?

Passwords are the development of the basic urge for each of us to protect our own personal information in the digital world.  There are many articles on Password Do’s and Don’ts, including some advice we’ve offered ourselves: but there is an evolving concern with the proper way to protect your data online. 

The first thing to know is where the weakest link is.  As a casual user, the best policy is to create a series of strong, unique passwords for any site that needs a login credential.  The longer and more complex, the better your chances at achieving a secure digital persona become.

For businesses, the weakest link is the user, not the data.  One of the greatest benefits to implementing strong digital authentication and security solutions is the ability to customize, limit, and monitor user traffic and access.  Many companies write off user traffic as typical behavior without delving deeper.  An appropriate solution provides a method of tracking traffic to sensitive information without violating personal privacy.  In this regard, both the individual and the business are protected from infiltration and attack. 

Where We Are Headed

“The technological bedrock on which we are building the future of humanity is deeply unstable and like a house of cards can come crashing down at any moment.” These are the words of XPRIZE writer Marc Goodman on the notion of a Manhattan Project for Cyber Security. It’s hard to say it better than that.  The way things are evolving today; technology is fast becoming both the hero and villain.  There is a certain possible doom in the future that everyone knows is coming, but that nobody wants to address. 

According to Goodman, “…it has become plainly clear that we can no longer neglect the security, public policy, legal, ethical, and social implications of the rapidly emerging technological tools we are developing.” It is an ever-developing subject that isn’t going away.  Sure, there might not be a war of the machines coming any time soon, but the dangers are real.

The issue comes down to this: protection. The new era of digital authentication and security solutions offer an answer to that problem, yet few take proper advantage of these resources. “There is a fundamental mismatch between the world we are building and our ability to protect it,” Goodman says, “Though we have yet to suffer the sort of game-changing…attack which many have warned [about], why wait…?”

            

Appropriate Digital Authentication and Security Solutions

In that kind of future, there are things that we can do today.  We may be unable to stop global attacks from our personal computers, but we can strengthen the security around our own digital vaults, both personal and business, to begin securing a better future. 

A strong, secure, single-sign on solution is a step in the right direction for securing a better tomorrow.  By enabling yourself and your users to have a single, secure door into their multitude of applications, you are providing a very strong lock to prevent breaches into your company private information.  By customizing individual access to sensitive information, as well as monitoring traffic, threats can be minimized in progress, before they have a chance to dig in too deep. 

The digital age is littered with threats of all sizes.  With our own White House being breached, it is singularly important to secure your own data as best you can.  By implementing strong password best practices, as well as introducing a secure login portal, complete with SSO and Self-Service Password reset, you can be sure to deter any hackers prior to them even getting into your infrastructure.   

We are the HackerAttacker Nation; it’s time we bolster our defenses with appropriate digital authentication and security solutions and prepare for a new age of warfare that is resting on our doorstep.