Infosec What Are We Fighting For?

Evan Francen recently posted a very thought provoking post on LinkedIn regarding the data privacy dilemma.

Evan says in his post, “We traded privacy for convenience. We allowed our privacy to be stolen from us, often without our knowledge or consent.”

I, for one, agree. I do believe we as consumers clammor for privacy, we say we want it, we demand it even and we get really upset when Facebook or some other tech company abuses our data or invades or privacy. However, I also believe that we also are the very same people who really like to see what are friends and family are up to on Facebook and we really enjoy next day shipping.

Chris Roberts then chimed in and says, “There is no privacy in the digital realm..” and poses a really interesting question that sparked this blog post: What ARE we fighting for in the infosec world?

Who Is In The Fight?

I think this is extremely contextual. In some aspects if you look industry-wide you will see similarities.

Financial Services companies want to protect their customer’s private information, PCI transactions, their money, etc.

Healthcare Providers they want to protect their patients, first and foremost, but also their patients private health information.

Manufacturers and Power Plants they want to protect their machinery and industrial control systems and ultimately protect human life and civilization.

Individuals though? What are we fighting for when it comes to information security, cyber security, data privacy, etc.?

I think we are fighting for our data rights to not be trampled in order for companies to make a buck. I think we fighting to not allow companies to abuse our data, sell it, trade it, without our consent. I think we are fighting for transparency, honesty and humility.

There is clearly a lot to fight for.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I may be naive but I don’t think we are too far gone when it comes to privacy. I believe we can still have privacy, to some extent, if we want it. However, it does come at a somewhat extreme cost. I may dive into this topic in another blog post and I am by no means an expert but I think to really have privacy means giving up a whole heck of a lot of convenience we have come to love and enjoy.

We each have our own fight but for me I try to be an advocate and a fighter for more education and to urge businesses to shift their mindset and put the consumer and their interests (all of them) first.

We cannot let off the gas. It’s going to take time, resilience, “commitment and accountability,” as Evan Francen says, but we can do it if we work together.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. In a world of reasonable people, be the unreasonable one.