News in the Category "Text"
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Book Review: We Have Root
By Bruce Schneier. John Wiley & Sons; Wiley.com; 304 pages; $19.99.
Bruce Schneier has been one of the most recognized authorities on cybersecurity for more than two decades. He has a talent for explaining the complexities of the cyber world to the layman without resorting to intimidating technical discourse. While sharing his extensive knowledge, he admits that he too continues to learn the ways of the cyber world.
A compilation of Schneier’s essays, We Have Root describes the heightened risk of cyber activity due to public policy and other timely issues, including election interference, privacy and surveillance, access to encrypted information, and leaks. Not surprisingly, the collection of separately published articles involves the frequent repetition of particular themes, which may be seen as a waste of time by some or a useful emphasis of key points by others. The single most useful piece, addressing a number of emerging potential threats, may be “Security and the Internet of Things,” which explains how some simple, everyday actions could result in death and destruction…
Bruce Schneier Wants You to Make Software Better
Producing effective code means understanding more than just programming
Security technologist Bruce Schneier has a warning: “What you code affects the world now. Gone are the days when programmers could ignore the social context of what they code, when we could say, ‘The users will just figure it all out.’ Today, programs, apps, and algorithms affect society. Facebook’s choices influence democracy. How driverless cars will choose to avoid accidents will affect human lives.”
Schneier should know, because synthesizing and explaining the impact of technology is what he does. “I work at the intersection of security, technology, and people, mostly thinking about security and privacy policy . I don’t have a single job,” says Schneier. “Instead, I do a portfolio of related things.”…
Cybersecurity: Same Threats, New Challenges
The pandemic created opportunities for hackers to exploit old vulnerabilities in new ways.
For business leaders, 2020 was many things. A test. A catalyst. An opportunity.
For chief information security officers (CISOs), it was all of these things at once—with the security of the business hanging in the balance. This was especially true when it came to the rapid shift to remote work.
The vulnerabilities of working from home were known before the shift—insecure personal devices, weak passwords on home devices—but not always prioritized. Other threats were given new life, such as phishing attacks that exploited Covid’s chaos to trick beleaguered employees. And some threats were unique to cloud technology itself…
Bruce Schneier on Technology Security, Social Media, and Regulation
GrowthPolicy. In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, you write: “American democracy is an information system, in which the information isn’t bits and bytes but citizens’ beliefs. […] When you really need to worry is when insiders go bad. And that is precisely what is happening in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.” What advice would you offer policy makers seeking to safeguard future elections from disinformation campaigns undertaken by bad inside actors?
Bruce Schneier: We need to break up the tech monopolies. Companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google wield enormous power in the market, and by extension in politics. Decentralization brings security, and the world would be much safer if there were twenty smaller Amazons and Facebooks and Googles than one of each. So we need both smaller companies and the ability to move, delete, combine, and reuse data from a variety of companies. Enforcing existing antitrust laws will make an enormous difference in how these companies affect society. And in areas where decentralization doesn’t make sense—when we have natural monopolies—we need to treat them like the utilities they are…
Review of Data and Goliath (German)
Wie und warum überwachen Firmen ihre Kunden? Wie und warum überwachen Regierungen ihre Bürgerinnen? Wie und warum bespitzeln und sabotieren Staaten sich gegenseitig? Welche Bedeutung hat Privatsphäre und wie lange wird es sie noch geben? Bruce Schneier behandelt diese Fragen auf knapp 300 Seiten unglaublich rund, ausgewogen und angenehm zu lesen. Die über hundert Seiten Quellennachweise und der zwanzigseitige Index kommen noch hinzu.
Der Autor kennt sich mit der Technik, den Gesetzen, der Politik und der Ideengeschichte aus und verwebt alle Informationen aus diesen verschiedenen Kategorien zu einem beeindruckenden, interessanten und besorgniserrenden Bild der allgegenwärtigen Überwachung am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts. Das Erklären globaler Zusammenhänge, das Peter Scholl-Latour jahrzehntelang für die analoge Welt übernommen hat, leistet Bruce Schneier mit “Data and Goliath” für die internetbasierte Weltgesellschaft. Dabei sagt er unverblümt seine Meinung, ohne zu verschweigen, dass es konträre Meinungen gibt. Außerdem gönnt er seinen Leserinnen in keinem Moment die Illusion, es gäbe einfache Lösungen. Im Gegenteil: Schneier betont die Verantwortung aller Bürger demokratischer Staaten, sich zu informieren, mit den Mächtigen zu kommunizieren und sich politisch zu organisieren…
#ISC2Congress: Modern Security Pros Are Much More than Technologists, Says Bruce Schneier
Speaking in the opening keynote of the virtual (ISC)2 Security Congress, renowned security technologist and best-selling author Bruce Schneier discussed the public-interest aspects of technology.
In particular, he explored the ethics of data privacy and security, whilst also outlining how today’s cybersecurity professionals are more than technologists; the work they do affects society as a whole.
“In cybersecurity, government access to encrypted communications has been the subject of a 25-year long debate. On the one side, there are police claiming they are going dark and need access to encrypted data in order to solve crimes. On the other side, security experts say it is impossible to provide that access without making systems insecure.”…
Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (Review)
Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier is an eye-opening look into the secret operations of our country’s surveillance operations. Through his analysis of the classified information leaked by former CIA contractor, Edward Snowden, Bruce breaks down the impacts that mass surveillance is having on society. He brings immense insights into how government and societies need to rectify the power imbalance and work to restore privacy and trust. While many of Bruce’s recommendations involve broad, overarching changes to legislation, there are several principles that security professionals can adopt to do our part—such as building resilience into our systems and processes; fixing vulnerabilities; upholding trust; and not subverting products or standards…
How Amazon and Walmart Could Fix IoT Security
Bruce Schneier Says Pressure on Retailers Could Fix Insecure IoT Supply Chains
IoT devices can be made cheaply and quickly. But as a result, they may lack adequate security features.
There’s been a global effort by countries, standards organizations and corporations to improve the state of IoT security through voluntary baseline standards. Connected devices suffer from a range of issues, including insecure default configurations when they’re sold as well as inconsistent patching by vendors.
But an IoT device isn’t just one product. It’s an assembly of components that come from a variety of manufacturers made in a variety of places. A security problem could be rooted in any of those components…
The Cyberflâneur #29: Bruce Schneier
A selection of books, essays, and academic papers chosen by Bruce Schneier for The Syllabus.
I. Citizen Hacker
This essay expands on the notion that people should “hack” democracy as a vehicle for change. Peering beyond the buzzwords, a healthier approach to political transformation through technological means “would involve refraining from fetishizing the tools while taking their intrinsically political nature into account along with the question of their design.”
II. Coding Democracy
This book offers an exploration of hackers as both societal disrupters and innovators. Admirably, Webb not only lays out a theoretical case for how hackers can invent “new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy” but she provides a close examination of prominent and productive case studies…
Coronavirus, il guru Bruce Schneier: «Le app di contact tracing? Inutili. Margini di errore troppo alti»
Quando il giornalista Glenn Greenwald ha dovuto cercare uno specialista che decifrasse la mole di documenti della National Security Agency consegnati da Edward Snowden non ha avuto dubbi: c’era solo una persona in America capace di tradurre codici e algoritmi in informazioni chiare per un pubblico ampio. E quella persona si chiamava Bruce Schneier.
Sette anni dopo, con la stessa lucidità con cui ha contribuito a svelare il sistema di spionaggio del governo americano ai danni dei cittadini, Schneier—una ventina di libri, ricercatore del Berkman Center for Internet & Society di Harvard, consulente del Dipartimento della difesa e di aziende (ultima l’IBM)—sintetizza così il suo giudizio sulle app di …
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.