Are Tech Companies Taking Our Security Seriously?steemCreated with Sketch.

in #stem6 years ago

From mobile phones to headphones to tablets, many people use technology daily. But do any of these people consider their security while using these devices? In addition, do the companies who make these tools understand all the possible compromises that can occur?

As if consumers needed more reasons to distrust tech firms in the United States, firms have reacted slowly to various breaches this year among other discovered vulnerabilities. Two of the worst security issues this year involved Meltdown and Spectre – a security flaw which had existed for over five years. According to Reuters, when discovered, Intel did not reach out to security agencies until the breach had been made public. If this is true, this means that the compromise affecting companies and agencies may go deeper than what we believe. In a similar manner, many firms have paid little attention to the DHS warnings about mobile platforms.

Just recently with the Chinese chip inserted into motherboards, the response from tech companies implied that security isn't a top concern if financial concerns are higher (relative to their business). Companies give little thought to how these compromises can be used by nefarious actors and have no response for how they're keeping people's information secure.



Check out the highest-rated Automating ETL course on Udemy, if you're interested in data.


We fully expect compromises and breaches to grow worse, even though we've seen some of the worst attacks this year. As our sponsor warned in the post on Meltdown and Spectre:

To state this is one of the most dangerous compromises in tech history is an understatement. Not only have these existed for years without anyone catching them (and we’re not sure if advanced hackers did), consumers and businesses have been implementing solutions while a compromise lurked in all of their systems. This also raises concerns about the open source community as well – people assume that other people are investigating problems, but do they have any evidence of this? These compromises show the danger of the security community’s diffusion of responsibility in regards to open source tools – “everyone else is looking at the problem.”

Assuming that someone else is looking at it leads to danger. Most people aren't. And most people do not consider security in anything. In addition, the little knowledge someone has about security only covers a small area. As we see, even if software is secure, hardware can easily compromise that. With the rise of smart chips and smart dust, infiltration becomes easier and easier for nefarious actors.


Consider some of the data breaches and hacks this year in 2018. These continue to grow worse in time. Do you feel safe? Do you think companies should continue to have your data? Do you want to offer more data to companies who mismanage your data?


As a measure of security for this account on the Steem platform, outside an incompatible rule change, this account will never be powered down or have Steem removed. In addition, if this happened due to an incompatible rule, the reason would be stated on a linked account for verification.

If you have Steem power, never post content, and want to add value to the Steem platform, consider delegating some of your rewards to @cheetah. The @cheetah account helps prevent spam and dishonesty on this platform.


We used the second paragraph from Can We Trust Tech Companies with permission from our sponsor, FinTek Development. Image from Pixabay.

Sort:  

Cyber Security will be one of the biggest challenges in the future as more and more of your life depends on technologies that can "easily" be hacked.

Besides that, and to answer your question in the title, companies are not ignoring our security, but they are not being able to adapt and follow the exponential growth that technology is experiencing.

Congratulations @sqlinsix! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

Award for the number of upvotes received

Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:

SteemitBoard Ranking update - Steem Power, Followers and Following added

Support SteemitBoard's project! Vote for its witness and get one more award!

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.18
TRX 0.15
JST 0.028
BTC 63033.54
ETH 2434.49
USDT 1.00
SBD 2.54