No new news on the campaign trail dear diary. My bid for the mayor’s chair has stalled and Stevie Wonder that Harper boy, has not delivered my senate appointment, so the next option is to seek the presidency of FIFA. I think it has something to do with soccer. Their current boss has been papered with scams and scandals.
Therefore, I am a perfect candidate to replace him.
I watched a soccer game once … therefore I qualify for the position.
Enough on that though.
I need to talk about security breaches today.
It’s nice to think that if we go through certain confidential keystrokes on a computer keyboard, or screen, we’re protected by some mystery safety measure included in our dealings with cyberspace.
Well, if we thought that, we’d be very wrong.
I mean bless the provincial privacy commissioner for giving it the old college try, but let’s face it folks, whether you are signing confidentiality agreements at a motor licence issuing desk in Lestock, or accessing health records in Regina or Estevan, or doing online banking, you are being compromised.
Banks and credit card companies issue false assurances that your economic secrets are safe with them. They also don’t tell us how many billions they simply lose every year due to card and bank recording frauds and hackers. It’s embarrassing and they don’t want us to know. In 2013, the Canadian Anti-fraud Centre handled 16,000 complaints that represented $29 million in reported losses. That’s a very, very small percentage that doesn’t touch real figures held by the major institutions that will never be revealed.
Cybersecurity strategy in Canada is supposed to secure government systems, provide partnerships to secure vital cyber systems outside the government and help Canadians be secure online.
How do you think they’re doing? Don’t laugh out loud please. They might be sensitive souls.
We’ve seen enough of the Edward Snowden syndrome to know that on screen, you are compromised. End of story. Don’t expect complete confidentiality, or token confidentiality. If you’ve never been hacked or shut down by malware, it’s probably because those who do it for a living, aren’t interested in your stuff. You may have lots of Facebook friends and postings or Linkedin messages, but they’re not interested in rocking your security world. We’re just not that important or worth the effort, but we’re out there, pretty well exposed, if they ever decide to play with us or squeeze us.
So please carry on, ‘puter user, just understand your business is not secure and any personal exchanges you conduct via keyboard will be compromised if someone with a modicum of cyber knowledge cares to hack in and do a little homework.
We have all kinds of safety-sounding agencies that are supposed to impress us. We even have a Canadian Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. An elected guy named Stevie Blaney. He has a cybersecurity strategy that is rolled out by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. We have a Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre. That sounds impressive. They respond and mitigate cyber incidents in the private sector. I wonder what that means?
Our feds spent $143 million to develop policing expertise to detect and disrupt cyber crime activities through dedicated resources and training. Who? What? How much?
We also have that aforementioned anti-fraud centre.
Botnets, malware, ransomeware popups, take your pick. Stock market manipulations, stealing personal financial information, it’s all there dear diary. But don’t be too afraid, Mr. Blaney is there to protect us.
