Do we need a new internet?
An interesting post came through the Educause Security list with a link to a recent NY Times article entitled “Do we need a new internet?“. Reading the article, you would think that all hope is lost with quotes like:
“Unless we’re willing to rethink today’s Internet,” says Nick McKeown, a Stanford engineer involved in building a new Internet, “we’re just waiting for a series of public catastrophes.”
“If you’re looking for a digital Pearl Harbor, we now have the Japanese ships streaming toward us on the horizon,”
Wow. As the person who posted to the list stated “Do you think it is really that bad?”. I am very curious as to the replies that will follow. Do we need a new internet or is it a combination of insecure operating systems, uneducated (security-wise) users, and poor patching? If we repair these things can we repair the internet? Can we repair these things?? A recent article in SCMagazine debated if security awareness is even worth doing.
The article brings up a good point about the current internet becoming “the bad neighborhood of cyberspace.” We are implementing this kind of secure and unsecure network for our users. Any user with administrator rights (see what running with Admin rights will do for you here) will be put on an ‘unsecure’ network with just a direct connection to the internet or “the bad neighborhood of cyberspace”. These users will have no access to network shares or any part of the secure network. Hopefully, our the users on the unsecure network will see the benefits of being on the secure network and make the unsecure network unnecessary.
A secure network will sacrifice things such as privacy and anonymity. Will users decide not to give up those things and would rather wipe their computer every 6 months when it gets infected? Quite an interesting article to debate!
EDIT: Excellent blog post by David Akin and one here from Gene Spafford from CERIAS
Related posts:
Comments