Opinion: Trust, Not Tech, is Holding Back a Safer Internet

upstart writes:

Trust, not tech, is holding back a safer internet:

Opinion The tech sector is failing at cybersecurity. Global spending on the stuff is at $190 billion a year, a quarter of the US defense budget. That hasn't stemmed an estimated $7 trillion in annual cybercriminal damages. People are fond of saying that the Wild West days of the internet are over, but on those numbers an 1875 Dodge City bank vault looks like Fort Knox.

So where's the sheriff? There are plenty of posses; no end of companies both small and large selling security by the bushel. Firewalls, scanners, heuristic, intrinsic, behavioral, managed, managerial, in-cloud, on-prem, you can mix and match the buzzwords and buy into every new idea. What you can't do is make your systems safe.

If you do want a safe bet in cybersecurity, it's that things aren't going to change any time soon without some fundamental shift in how the market works - if 40 years of constant failure can be called working.

We have so little reason to trust what's on offer or those offering it. Several stories last week show this: Apple, which makes a big play of intrinsic platform security, is heading to court for ignoring user consent and silently gathering app data anyway. Microsoft, even as it announces the extension of its security platform into Linux, reveals it fumbled its switches on its service infrastructure and took business-critical access away from its customers. These are the big shots in town, but they can't shoot straight.

It's almost as if we can't rely on the private sector to protect us against crime. Guess what: we never could and we never will. The state has to take on that role - usually late, usually badly, and usually against the wishes of those who like their crimes kept in the private sector, but usually to better effect than the alternatives.

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