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"AN INVASION OF THE U.S. BY HACKERS"
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It appears that there are two different animals here at play.
One is private sector hacking and the other is public sector hacking. It’s neither America nor the Middle East first, but rather a balanced approach to both.
The minute Congress allocates public funds to guard against private sector hacking, it would be like the NSA, CIA and FBI pouring more gasoline onto the existing conflagration regarding privacy amongst US Citizens. Like private sector locksmiths, alarm systems, neighborhood patrol units, etc., the private sector must evolve into having its own cyber protection.
Does that mean that public sector technology and previous hackers can be used in the mix? That notion is very tricky because the private sector may feel that their toes are really being stepped on here by the Feds. Then the IRS will be invited to the party if the Feds find any perceived violations of data storage. Remember, it was the private sector that created all the modern software for computers in the first place. So now the private sector has to figure out fail-safe security for that software and data clouds.
I happened to be at Home Depot last week and asked a manager about the situation. She said that only the 3 cards that HD issues are the ones hacked and not Master Card, Visa and the rest. In particular, she said that the high credit lines of their professional contractor credit card accounts were being targeted the most. Still, there’s a discomforting feeling about using any credit cards at Home Depot.
Case in point: Target. Six months after the initial breach of Target’s data base when corporate was assuring customers that the problem had been fixed, my bankcard was fraudulently used a day after I made a purchase there. The point is that the hackers are way ahead of anything that corporate will say simply because corporate doesn’t want to lose any more customers as they already have. Target (apt name for hackers) has lost millions of dollars as a result of the hacking scandal.
So we are obviously in the beginning stages of evolution to overcome hacking in the private sector. In the public sector, which is more about protecting secrets, they are having their own problems within. Case in point: Snowden.
General rule of thumb: if data can be stored in cyber space, then it can be breached in cyber space one way or the other. The music and film industries face the same problem in the digital age. Not until someone figures out a way to perhaps voiceprint or fingerprint IDs for consumers and corporations will we ever be truly secure in cyber space.
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