Security In Your Digital Life

Let's talk about a different kind of disruption today - how your digital and personal life is disrupted by those who might attack you in some way, whether physically or digitally.  We recently had some friends who live in a retirement setting in a gated retirement community.  This facility has the type of security you would want people to have who might be less able to protect themselves.  But, they were robbed.  If you have ever been robbed you know how invasive and disruptive that can be.  But, they were robbed not just once, but twice.  Treasures acquired over a life time were taken.

The second robbery took all of their important papers that contained their wills, etc.  The potential for ID theft is now very real to them.

Physical protection is relatively easy - locks, alarms, protective services - but none are foolproof.  To protect my property I only have to worry about access to that property, which is usually located in one place, maybe a few places.  But digital protection is much harder.  Much of my identity information is scattered around the country depending on someone else to protect that information.  I have no control over how, or if, they do anything to protect that information.  I can implement digital protection on my computers and servers, but even that depends on the manufactures of those devices and software to have a system that works and is kept up to date against the rapidly changing methods used by those who would digitally attack you.

Information Assurance (IA) is a hot topic these days.  Standards have been developed by NIST and others.  But, these are only lacklusterly followed by many, leaving them easy targets.  But, like physical security, digital security is not foolproof.  If you want to be absolutely secure, then you have get rid of anything that someone wants to take from you.  Digitally, that mean unplugging your computers from the grid.