TRUST


Trust/trəst/   :  Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.


The foundations of the working of human society are built on trust.  This has been so since the beginning of recorded history.   As our communities evolved from hunter gatherer groups into agricultural chiefdoms, and ultimately modern states their operation, increasing complexity and success relied not only upon our cultural evolution as posited by Robert Wright in Non-Zero (Non Zero)  but also upon trust.   Trust is integral to our ‘culture.’ 


The birth of capitalism and the rapid economic and technological growth of the last five centuries began with the pooling of capital used by investors to underwrite a ships trading expedition called the ‘contratto di commenda’ .  Such ventures could not have happened without the inherent trust that the investors had - that the expedition’s captain would return the profits to the investors. 


Today we could not conduct our modern lives without trust.  We go about our day with confidence that our utilities will be delivered, that the bus or train we ride on will get us safely to our destination,  that the coffee shop we visit maintains acceptable levels of hygiene,  that our ISP and our email providers will keep our data confidential.    Ah... now that brings up a point.   Can we indeed trust our Cloud providers to maintain our privacy and keep our data secure.   They may mean well - but can they really do it.?   If RSA – that 500 lb security behemoth cannot even keep its servers secure from hackers then who can ? (RSA hack)  So while we trust our providers to do the best they can – can they actually deliver ?  


An interesting revelation for me at the recent Global Mobile Congress in Barcelona was the results of a particular piece of market research suggesting that users trust their mobile operators.  I guess that comes from many years of generally good, reliable service which has gradually gotten cheaper.   But now that data is overtaking voice as the biggest service on the networks - with it comes our mobile Web access and so I would suggest that our faith in MNO’s will start to erode.    The migration of hackers and malware from fixed to mobile is happening at the same rate that mobile access is proliferating. (Mobile malware) 


There is much FUD out there when it comes to security on the Net and with it an undermining of trust.   After all without real security who can you trust?   Does all of this mean that the trust evolved and developed over millennia is now in danger of being eroded completely.  


We in our modern connected societies have become ever more suspicious particularly of those in whom we should have ‘trust’ i.e. the State.  (Silent State)  The State has become ever more intrusive into our daily lives and our privacy,  which we (maybe not the generation Y’ers)  hold dear,  is compromised.  The same holds true for the Internet age mega corporation – Google and Facebook.  Who proudly pronounce the death of privacy.   (Zuckerberg says privacy is dead ) 


But I digress.  Trust is the lubricant of the modern economic engine.  Not privacy.  If we are to maintain and increase economic growth we need to regain trust particularly when it comes to online transactions.   Simply because online is where much of our economic activity is going.   We need to find ways in which we can confidently engage online with trust.  


A Single Sign On (SSO) which simplifies the process of accessing so many of the services we use on a daily basis – particularly social media – does not constitute anything more than basic identification.  Confirmation of self reported credentials.  Neither the site, nor the user can be confident that the other party is legitimate.    But SSO is great – because it works (most of the time) and it is easy to use. 


Imagine if you could log on and authenticate the session as easily as using an SSO?   Imagine if both the site and the user could proceed with a session (transaction / communication/ engagement ) confident that the other party was 100% legitimate and that the communication was secure?  (LiveEnsure)


That would bring trust back to the Internet.  That would allow us to realize the full potential that the Internet has to offer.  That full potential being  -  much stronger economic growth at a time when the World is in desperate need of good news for its economy !

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The End of Passwords

Finally it seems … the penny has dropped.   Passwords are a poor substitute for real online security.   There is more and more ‘chatter’ about it.    Robin Henry writing in the Sunday Times on New Years Day talks of the end of ‘password hell’ invoking solutions in the pipeline from the Web Gods – Apple and Google.  The talk is of new biometric solutions such as facial and hand movement recognition.  Even IBM is talking this way.  ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/thestreet/2011/12/20/ibms-tech-predictions-for-the-next-5-years/ )  I agree with the notion that passwords are a dying breed but not that biometrics will become vogue.   They are fraught with problems of their own such as reliability, accuracy and the need for referencing of data-bases ( fail !) .    Why are passwords defunct?   Basically they are difficult to remember and they are easy to steal.    The solutions needed are those that require no cognitive load for the user ( the most unreliable participant in this enterprise
Read more

WIKILEAKS - the fuss?

Why all the fuss ? Why the ‘outrage’ at this ‘threat to national security’ ?   Are we really worried that nuclear war is going to break out because of these ‘dirty’ secrets getting out.  As if the North Koreans are going to up the ante any more than their mock charge of last week because of the abuse and scorn heaped upon them by US Diplomats.  ? !    Come on. To me the irony of this bluster is that it is (largely) from the right wing establishment in the US - calling it treason!     Any party that parades a half wit like Palin as a presidential hopeful hardly holds any moral high ground when it comes to protecting the USA.   Her appointment as the ‘leader of the free World’ will be enough to send any level headed American ( let alone any one of their Allies ) into a panicky tailspin at the thought of what she may stumble into ( by accident or design) . So how did these documents get out there?   Poor security.  Plain and simple.   If the US is so worried about this incident su
Read more

SPOOKS - CYBER ATTACK

Well I’ll be damned – if the subject of my last blog wasn’t the central theme to last nights episode of Spooks – CYBERWAR.    (To those who live outside the UK – Spooks is a very popular TV series about the goings on of a key team inside MI5 who spend their time thwarting terrorist attacks on the UK – while engaging in risqué amorous trysts on the side ).   And so last night we had the Russians and the Chinese –(working together !!) – ganging up on MI5 by infiltrating ( hacking ) their ‘secure’ internal network.     Whether the events portrayed were within the bounds of possibility or credibility who knows?     But if teenagers can break into the Pentagon – then I am sure that Russian/Chinese expert hackers can probably do something along the lines of infiltrating a UK Govt ‘Spooks’ departments network.      Either way it constituted an attack on British soil by foreign ‘combatants’ – which ( if it were true ) would have been a first since the Normans in 1066.   So we saw how vulner
Read more