Category Archives: Internet Security
China to Implement Its First Law on Internet Security After Ransomware Attack – Sputnik International
Asia & Pacific
03:47 01.06.2017(updated 03:51 01.06.2017) Get short URL
The ransomware attacked inmore than100 countries, including China, byencrypting data and demanding ransom payments inBitcoin cryptocurrency starting fromMay 12. The IP addresses ofat least 29,372 agencies inChina were attacked, mainly inthe energy, transportation, medical, education, and science and technology sectors.
REUTERS/ Kacper Pempel/Illustration
Although the fallout ofthe WannaCry ransomware has subsided, we cannot take lightly other new cyber worms, said an official atthe National Research Center forInformation Technology Security.
Experts disclosed that almost all sectors and enterprises unaffected inthis incident adopted risk control ahead oftime. A critical patch was issued byMicrosoft toremove underlying vulnerabilities forsupported systems nearly two months beforethe attack, though many organizations failed toapply it.
In addition, the concept ofnetwork isolation asthe most effective method tomaintain internet security should be revisited, asintranet withoutany protective measures would be more vulnerable, experts said.
This article was originally published inthe Global Times.
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China to Implement Its First Law on Internet Security After Ransomware Attack - Sputnik International
Whistic Partners with the Center for Internet Security to Extend the … – PR Web (press release)
Our ability to offer the CIS Controls as a questionnaire in a collaborative, online user experience will benefit our customers and their vendors as they seamlessly complete and securely share their responses.
SILICON SLOPES, UTAH (PRWEB) June 01, 2017
Whistic, a leading third-party security assessment platform, today announced that it has partnered with the Center for Internet Security (CIS), a leading global provider of cybersecurity services, to extend the reach of the Critical Security Controls for Effective Cyber Defense (CIS Controls).
As cyber threats continue to increase at a rapid rate and at global scale, Whistic remains dedicated to enhancing the ability of organizations to improve their internal security posture and assess the security risks of their third parties, said Josh Mortensen, CEO of Whistic. The CIS Controls and CIS Benchmarks are the global standard and recognized best practices for securing IT systems and data against the most pervasive attacks. Our ability to offer the CIS Controls as a questionnaire in a collaborative, online user experience will benefit our customers and their vendors as they seamlessly complete and securely share their responses.
Serving information security teams in the United States and Europe, the Whistic security assessment platform simplifies the end-to-end assessment process and delivers visibility into third-party security risk that has historically been trapped in static questionnaires. Whistic simplifies and automates the sending, receiving and scoring of security profiles against widely adopted standards at scale as a part of the growing trend toward greater scrutiny of third-party security. Whistics partnership with the CIS, as well as its support of other leading standards and widely accepted frameworks, reinforces the companys focus on enhancing the tools that companies already trust in order to understand the security posture of their third-party relationships.
About the Center for Internet Security CIS is a forward-thinking nonprofit entity that harnesses the power of the global IT community to safeguard private and public organizations against cyber threats. Our CIS Controls and CIS Benchmarks are the global standard and recognized best practices for securing IT systems and data against the most pervasive attacks. These proven guidelines are continually refined and verified by a volunteer global community of experienced IT professionals. CIS is home to the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), the go-to resource for cyber threat prevention, protection, response, and recovery for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments.
For more information, visit http://www.cisecurity.org, read the latest on the CIS Blog (https://www.cisecurity.org/resources/blog/) or follow CIS on Twitter @CIsecurity (https://twitter.com/CISecurity).
About Whistic Located in the heart of the Silicon Slopes in Utah, Whistic is a leading third-party security assessment platform. Built for information security teams looking to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and scope of their third-party security assessment program, Whistic enhances productivity and unlocks insights traditionally trapped in static security questionnaires. Using the platforms intelligent and automated recurring assessments, Whistic customers eliminate the administrative burdens of back-and-forth third-party requests and free up time to focus on security. The Whistic platform is designed for an intuitive and collaborative user experience and harnesses the wisdom of hundreds of security professionals to deliver risk insights through its proprietary CrowdConfidence scoring algorithm.
For more information, visit https://www.whistic.com, read the latest on the Whistic blog (https://blog.whistic.com) or follow Whistic on Twitter @Whistic_inc (https://twitter.com/whistic_inc).
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Whistic Partners with the Center for Internet Security to Extend the ... - PR Web (press release)
China cyber-security law will keep citizens’ data within the Great Firewall – The Register
China's new cyber-security laws, which come into effect on Thursday, may make it harder for foreign businesses to trade in the country.
Under the regulations, data on Chinese citizens including personal information, salary details and more can only be kept within China. The law would also prevent the transmission of any economic, scientific or technological data overseas on either national security or public interest grounds, as defined by the Chinese government.
The rules apply to any "network operator" a term that encompasses social media companies and large internet firms and mean that they need users' permission before transferring any data on them outside the country. The consequences for businesses that fail to comply with this new law are dire: a refused or revoked licence can never be reversed. This means if companies that fail to comply with the so-called Bei'an licence laws are liable to get blacklisted.
Bill Hagestad, a former US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel turned cyber conflict author and researcher, told El Reg that the new rules reflect heightened concern in Beijing about foreign influence mediated through the internet.
"The new Chinese internet security law is designed to protect the cyber borders of China against foreign negative influences," Hagestad said. "[It is] also designed to ensure the Communist Party ideals are not directly or indirectly challenged by impure thoughts.
"Given the release of the Shadow Brokers' NSA tools, the Chinese are now more certain than ever before that any foreign technology brought into the Middle Kingdom must be inspected and deemed pure/free from any vulnerabilities that could challenge China's internet security."
Alex Nam, EMEA managing director of content delivery network CDNetworks, warned that foreign internet companies will now find it harder to trade in China.
"The new cybersecurity law on 1 June will make it harder for non-Chinese businesses to trade in the country," Nam said. "All businesses that host websites and web content (such as applications) in China will be affected. Yet many don't know what impact the law has on them or whether their business is in jeopardy.
"Thousands of government officials, as well as intelligent algorithms, are currently investigating whether non-Chinese companies meet all of the requirements of the new legislation. The new law has a huge impact on network operators and critical information infrastructure operators because they host websites in China on behalf of other companies. As a result, checks are being carried out to determine whether hosting providers and content delivery network (CDN) providers have the necessary licences, and are being asked by government officials to make the necessary changes in the shortest possible time."
CDNetworks says it's seeing "uncertainty from companies as to whether they are affected by the legislation".
"Without support and guidance, UK businesses are putting themselves at risk," Nam added. "Especially the UK businesses operating in China, who are completely unaware that this new law even impacts them."
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China cyber-security law will keep citizens' data within the Great Firewall - The Register
Internet Security Alliance: NIST framework metrics should focus on threats – Inside Cybersecurity (subscription)
Internet Security Alliance: NIST framework metrics should focus on threats Inside Cybersecurity (subscription) The National Institute of Standards and Technology should focus on developing an analytical tool enabling entities to assess cyber threats on a monetized basis, according to the president of the Internet Security Alliance, as NIST continues probing ... |
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Internet Security Alliance: NIST framework metrics should focus on threats - Inside Cybersecurity (subscription)
In addressing internet security issues, make sure to provide solutions – Minneapolis Star Tribune
Minneapolis Star Tribune | In addressing internet security issues, make sure to provide solutions Minneapolis Star Tribune That said, I'm not convinced that apathy is the problem. In a 2015 survey, researchers at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration found that 84 percent of online households reported at least one internet security concern (the ... |
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In addressing internet security issues, make sure to provide solutions - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Internet infrastructure security guidelines for Africa unveiled – Premium Times
The Internet Society and the African Union Commission unveiled a new set of Internet Infrastructure Security Guidelines for Africa during the African Internet Summit, taking place in Nairobi 30 May-2 June. The guidelines will help Africa create a more secure Internet infrastructure and are set to change the way African Union States approach cyber security preparedness.
The guidelines the first of their kind in Africa were developed by a multi-stakeholder group of African and global internet infrastructure security experts, and are the first step towards building a more secure Internet in Africa. They will help AU member states strengthen the security of their local Internet infrastructure through actions at a regional, national, ISP/operator and organizational level.
Africas cyber security environment faces a unique combination of challenges, including a lack of awareness of the risks involved in using technology. Kenya was ranked the 69th most vulnerable country (out of 127) in the 2015 Deloitte Global Threat Index. Some of the main reasons are: low awareness, underinvestment, talent shortage and overload of data. Deloitte further estimates that Kenya lost $171 million to cybercrime in 2016.
Africa has achieved major strides in developing its Internet Infrastructure in the past decade. However, the Internet wont provide the aspired benefits unless we can trust it. We have seen from recent experiences that Africa is not immune from cyber-attacks and other security threats. These guidelines, developed in collaboration with the African Union Commission, will help African countries put in place the necessary measures to increase the security of their Internet infrastructure, explained Dawit Bekele, Africa Regional Bureau Director for the Internet Society.
This document is launched at a time when the world feels the real and urgent need to build and reinforce structures aimed at tackling the growing cyber threat to the global digital economy. Governments, companies, network operators, universities and organisations across African Union member states are encouraged to take action to implement the Internet Infrastructure Security Guidelines.
This is another timely milestone achievement given the new security challenges in cyberspace, said Moctar Yeday, Head, Information Society Division, African Union. The Commission of the African Union will continue its partnership with the Internet Society on a second set of guidelines addressing personal data protection in Africa, he added.
According to ITU ICT Facts and Figures 2016, it is estimated that 25.1 per cent of Africans are now online and despite lower Internet access rates vs. other regions in the world, there has been a sustained double-digit growth in Internet penetration over the past 10 years. This is due in large part to an increase of mobile Internet and in more affordable smart phones in the market and Africas young, technology-savvy population. However, to continue to improve access and connect the unconnected, people need to trust the Internet.
Symantec, a global leader in cyber security, observed 24 million malware incidents targeting Africa in 2016. As some malware incidents probably go unobserved, the real number of incidents may be much higher. In a 2013 report from Symantec, cybercrime was increasing at a faster rate in Africa than any other region.
As Internet penetration grows in Africa and more business takes place online, implementing security measures against malware incidents to protect Internet users becomes increasingly important.
Offering actions that are tailored to the African cyber security environment and solutions for an ever changing online landscape, the recommendations in the document launched today can play a key role in helping Africa respond to the kind of Internet attacks that recently paralyzed critical public and government services.
A copy of the Africa Internet Infrastructure Security Guidelines can be found at: http://www.InternetSociety.org/doc/aiisg.
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Internet infrastructure security guidelines for Africa unveiled - Premium Times
Security Best Practices for the Internet of Things – Web Host Industry Review
I recently spoke at the latest InteropITX conference on the topic of IoT and cloud security. At the beginning of the session I asked a fun and simple question: How many people in the room have two or more devices, right there with them, which can connect to the cloud? I then asked the same question, but for people who had three devices; and then four, and even five devices.
I was impressed by the number of people who still had their hands up with three devices in that room. The winner had five devices with them, including two phones, a laptop, an iPad, and an Apple Watch.
Are you really surprised? If you look around your own home and even workplace how many devices do you have right now which can connect to the Internet? I bet its quite a few.
As this all sinks in remember that we are living in a vastly connected world. The latest Cloud Index Report from Cisco said that cloud services are accelerated in part by the unprecedented amounts of data being generated by not only people but also machines and things. Cisco estimates that 600 ZB will be generated by all people, machines, and things by 2020, up from 145 ZB generated in 2015.
In the very near future well see almost everything become a connected entity where entire cities become smart hubs creating vast amounts of data.
During my session, I discussed, from a very simple perspective, that IoT consists of six key components. That is Compute, Connectivity, Security, Data and Analytics, Ecosystem, and Services.
Read more:TheFour Internet of Things Connectivity Types Explained
Almost every connected thing has these six components in one aspect or another. Think of an Apple Watch for example. It has a compute engine, it connects via Bluetooth, security is accomplished via a unique connection, it produces a vast amount of data which is then analyzed, your ecosystem is built on the Apple platform, and finally the watch delivers an array of services revolving around notifications, health, and more.
With this in mind lets look at each of these components and understand where security fits in.
In the near future well see an even larger influx of connected devices and the data they all produce. For your own use-cases, make sure to plan out the design, deployment, and utilization of your connected systems. Make sure youre clear on the components being used, where data is being transmitted/stored, and how these devices interact with your overall IT infrastructure.
Careful planning not only helps mitigate risk, it also helps you better utilize all of these connected things. And, in return, help you create even more value from the solution.
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Security Best Practices for the Internet of Things - Web Host Industry Review
New uses for RFID and security for the internet of things – Phys.Org
May 31, 2017 by Bernadette Esposito Sanjay Sarma. Credit: David Sella
On the 25th anniversary of the universal barcode in 1999, the barcode community gathered around Sanjay Sarma and his colleagues and said, "Let's do this."
"Our idea," says Sarma, vice president for open learning and the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, "was to track everything in the supply chain." Some companies knew they had too much inventory. Others didn't know where their inventory was. Consumers couldn't find the right sized shirt while that shirt was sitting in the back room. Food was going bad and shelves went un-stocked. Things got lost in the supply chain. So, Sarma, along with research scientist David Brock of MIT and Kevin Ashton, a visiting researcher from Proctor and Gamble, came up with a low-cost radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. "At the time, it was a crazy idea," says Sarma. "But it stuck."
RFID tags, which had been around for several decades, were clunky and expensivepartly because of the amount of data placed on the tags. "We used to say, 'Someday the internet will be everywhere'this was late 90sand we didn't have the word 'cloud' yet. So, we used to say, 'Someday, you can write the data in the sky,'" says Sarma, who developed new standards for RFID, new manufacturing processes, and innovative ways to use them in the supply chain. The supply chain industry adopted the protocol, and standards-making efforts shifted. Auto ID Labs laid the groundwork for the standardization of RFID technology. It took sensing of identitythe job of RFID and barcodesand made it universal. Auto ID Labs, where Sarma remains active today, emerged from the MIT Auto ID Center. "In many ways that effort also laid the groundwork for what is now called the internet of things," Sarma says.
Internet of things
"If you look at the world today, you may have a Nest Thermostat in your home; you may have an Amazon Echo in your home; if you're lucky enough to own a Tesla car, you can actually track your Tesla car over the internet. More appliances are becoming fundamentally internet-connected and intelligent in ways that make our lives safer, the world safer, help with climate change, help with saving costs, help with better health care," says Sarma. All of this comes from a network of objects embedded in intelligence that interact with the environment. That is called the internet of things.
"When we start connecting things," says Sarma, "we enable a level of resource management, a level of marshalling of the planet, of what the planet offers us. When we have little or no information on something, we over-compensate. We burn more electricity, more energy and we're doing more damage to the planet." He asserts that hundreds of rooms are consuming electricity they should not, that are heating when no one is there. If you knew that a person was still driving and that there's no need to turn the heat on, just imagine how much energy one could save and what impact this technology would have on the planet. "To me, saving the planet is sort of an existential question and we have an enormous amount of work to do to do that," Sarma explains.
Risks, norms, and rules
With any new technology, there are risks. The first and most fundamental one for the internet of things is privacy. "If I have a Nest Thermostat in my house, I can turn the heating off when I'm not at home. If I forget to turn off the heat when I go on vacation, it can detect that I'm away and turn itself off." The flipside is that it can tell the wrong person you're not there, thereby increasing the risk of theft and burglary. A sort of extreme version of that, he explains, is a malicious party claiming control of a nuclear power plant. This is the great fear of the internet of things: Many people are adopting it and they're moving fast, but they're not thinking about security, and that is a recipe for disaster. "My research deals with balancing the two," Sarma says.
In any system with an agreed-upon architecture and with easy-to-understand methods, safeguards and security can be built into the system. "Imagine if you were concerned about safety on the roadsand we did have those worries a hundred years ago," says Sarma. Over time, certain standards are implemented. "In the U.S. we drive on the right side of the road; we have traffic lights; we have stop signs; we have behavioral norms. If a parent and a child want to cross the street at a crosswalk, traffic stops. If a school bus in front of you flashes its lights, you stop. These behavioral normsthese standardshelp recognize when something goes awry." Sarma explains that if one of these behavioral norms is broken, one can deduce that the driver's eyesight isn't good, or that they weren't paying attention, or maybe they were texting, or maybe that person is malicious.
The problem with the internet of things is that within this newly established world, there are few norms. When different people implement it in their own way, it's very hard to detect malice, he says. It's also hard to put together a protection. Unlike the road systems, in which there are police cars and cameras, "we don't have any of those. The internet of things is the wild west. My own research is directed toward establishing those norms and rules, so that at least you have some orderliness, so the remnant disorderliness stands out and can be detected."
Avatar
One protection Sarma and his team are promoting is something called the avatar, a cloud-things concept. "The basic idea we're saying is don't have Object A talk to Object B, have Object A talk to its cloud avatar of itself. Have Object B talk to its Cloud Avatar of itself. Then, have the Avatars talk to each other." The reason it works is because physical connections between A and B are many. "If you just say, the real object only talks to its avatar and the avatars talk to each other, we can bring to bear all the stuff we know from the WorldWideWeb, etc. That's a clean way to look at the future of the internet of things and, strangely enough, that's what Tesla does, that's what Nest does, but unfortunately implementations are a little bit all over the place," he says.
"The internet of things will go through its ups and downs, but when we look back on our lives in 10 years, pretty much anything you do you'll back on a day when it wasn't connected and you'll sort of wonder how life was then."
Explore further: Envisioning a future quantum internet
This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.
The quantum internet, which connects particles linked together by the principle of quantum entanglement, is like the early days of the classical internet no one can yet imagine what uses it could have, according to Professor ...
In 2007, Google unleashed a fleet of cars with roof-mounted cameras to provide street-level images of roads around the world. Now MIT spinout Essess is bringing similar "drive-by" innovations to energy efficiency in homes ...
In 2000, five MIT Media Lab alumni co-founded ThingMagic to help bring radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologywireless readers and data-transmitting tagsto the supply chain. This meant companies would be able ...
Epilepsy affects 50 million people worldwide, but in a third of these cases, medication cannot keep seizures from occurring. One solution is to shoot a short pulse of electricity to the brain to stamp out the seizure just ...
The Internet of Things may be in its early stages but it's evolving rapidly - and experiencing some difficult growing pains.
The world should consider ways to limit data growth on the internet to prevent run-away energy consumption and help limit carbon emissions, say leading computer scientists.
Nest Labs is adding Google's facial recognition technology to a high-resolution home-security camera, offering a glimpse of a future in which increasingly intelligent, internet-connected computers can see and understand what's ...
A creator of the Android software powering most of the world's smartphones stepped into the competitive hardware market on Tuesday with a new handset called Essential.
Delivering packages with drones can reduce carbon dioxide emissions in certain circumstances as compared to truck deliveries, a new study from University of Washington transportation engineers finds.
A new interactive design tool developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute enables both novices and experts to build customized legged or wheeled robots using 3D-printed components and off-the-shelf actuators.
Apple is reportedly working on a chip called the Apple Neural Engine, which would be dedicated to carrying out artificial intelligence (AI) processing on its mobile devices.
A chess-playing robot stole the show as Asia's largest tech fair kicked off in Taiwan Tuesday with artificial intelligence centre stage.
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New uses for RFID and security for the internet of things - Phys.Org
Paranoid about internet security? Here are the most secure OS options – The American Genius
Internet security
After the Year of Datasec Fail, in the wake of breach after leak after hack, its time to cop to the fact that private data security is Serious Business.
Private sector titans like Google, Facebook and Yahoo, not to mention the actual flippin US government, have demonstrated that, if theres anything in your life youd rather Vladimir Putin and/or the entire Internet not know about, youd better spit on your hands, boot up your robot of choice, and take responsibility for your own infosec.
The mere notion of handling your own information security (infosec to professional nerds like your narrator) conjures images of command lines, spaghetti code and whatever else it is tech types actually, yknow, do. If only there was an easy fix! A simple, widely applicable one-shot that would make your precious 1s and 0s safe forever.
There pretty much is. Its Linux.
Superficially, using the famous open-source operating system might seem like the opposite of security. After all, the point of open-source is that anybody can look at and futz with the code. How is that compatible with make everything hidden?
As weve ceded more and more of our lives to internet-enabled services, nothing is hidden. Cloud-based services like Google Docs and online-only offerings like Facebook and whatever Yahoos doing these days are accessible to everyone, everywhere. Thats the point. Thats their offer. Accessible to everyone is incompatible with accessible only to nice people.
The Linux fix is twofold.
First, old-school hackers (cue pounding 90s electronica soundtrack) still trading on invading your personal system generally dont bother with Linux exploits. Windows and the traditionally safer Apple are bigger, more valuable targets. Second, 5 popular distros thats particular flavors of Linux some noble white-hat nerds put together for you incorporate fixes for increasingly common Internet breaches of the kind that felled Facebook and Google.
Tails is a live OS, which means you can put it on a USB stick or disc, run it on any computer, and when you pop it out again the computer goes back to the way it was. Local hacks work by reading your logs, huge quantities of nested information your operating system hangs onto for complicated reasons. Windows does it. Apple does it. Some Linux distros do it. Tails doesnt. It also roots your internet traffic through the legendary Tor, benchmark of Internet anonymity. Tailss commitment to zero-footprint computing also has the smaller but just as welcome convenience that, if you do prefer to use it sparingly and stick with your old, less-secure OS, it leaves no souvenirs on your system; your old setup will boot like nothing happened.
If this were a 19th century novel, this entry would be called IprediaOS. Or, the Trouble with Tor. Tor prioritizes security above all else and limits Internet access accordingly. Theres a lot of stuff it wont go near, because its just not secure enough. That limits the mainstream usability of Tor, not to mention services like Tails that rely on it. IprediaOS uses a similar but less strict service, I2P, that affords access to the everyday Web with minimal loss of security. IprediaOS also comes with anonymous chat, email and BitTorrent clients.
Whonix is a unique beast. Its a virtual machine, which is (incredible oversimplification incoming!) a program that thinks its a computer and convinces others to treat it likewise. Its big offer is that it can be run as a program on the Windows and Mac OSes, making it a perfect match for anybody who only has a job or three that demand anonymity cloud-based business records, say, or anonymous blogging and is otherwise good to go with a by-the-book setup. Its also a great way to learn the basics of home infosec, since, being based on the venerable Debian distro of Linux, it plays well with Microsoft, Apple and other Linux systems.
Not a typo! This cleverly named beastie discreetly keeps your secrets by building a discrete structure, unconnected to anything else, for you to whisper them in. Its limited in function compared to the other services listed, functioning primarily as data storage and anti-malware/spyware/Trojan solution, but it is very good at those things. Its in beta at present, and as is a betas wont theres a bug or two to shake out, but it has real promise as a data security tool.
Qubes is the Whonix solution raised to the level of an operating system. It compartmentalizes your work as separate virtual machines, limiting any compromise in security to one set of services, with no chance of spreading to more vulnerable areas. Qubes even color-codes your machines for you, with colored frames indicating the potential security vulnerability of a given VM. So, if you set up one machine as straight data storage with no access to the outside world, thats about as secure as data gets and Qubes will tell you so. The machine you do your web browsing in will be coded otherwise. Better still, Qubes provides a secure data-transfer solution that lets you move information safely between machines. Last September Edward Snowden, a man understandably interested in information safety, tweeted If youre serious about security, @QubesOS is the best OS available today. Its what I use, and free. Nobody does VM isolation better. Cant say fairer than that.
Obviously, as is made clear by the monolith of text above, infosec is an enormous topic.
That said, dont let it scare you.
Get educated on the subject and in a week of digital futzing youll be warm in the knowledge that you do security better than the smartest, richest, most powerful people in the world. Happy (white hat) hacking!
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Paranoid about internet security? Here are the most secure OS options - The American Genius
Blockchain Offers Hope for the Broken Internet – Fortune
Photograph by Getty Images
A version of this post originally appeared in the Cyber Saturday edition of Data Sheet , Fortune s daily tech newsletter.
If we were to design the Internet all over again, it's a good bet we wouldn't build what we have today: A giant advertising oligopoly where consumers trade privacy for free services, and which is so insecure that hackers and criminals run wild.
But path dependency is a powerful thing, and so replacing the Internet we know with something else is very hard. That doesn't mean, though, people aren't trying.
There are big ideas in the air these days, including those shared this week at the bitcoin-blockchain extravaganza known as Consensus . The three-day event in New York City revealed some radical technology to change how we interact with the Internet.
The most ambitious announcement came from a company called Blockstack, which is building a new type of Internet browser using the distributed ledger software known as blockchain . The idea is that people will no longer have to supply log-in information to the likes of Facebook and Google to interact with others on the web. Instead, they'll keep control of their identity by using blockchain's authentication features.
If all this sounds pie-in-the-sky, don't write it off too quickly. I spoke with executives from major companies who are all making the same case that "identity" is the biggest problem with the Internet right now, and hinted they're set to unveil blockchain-based solutions of their own. Look for announcements this summer.
Meanwhile, at the Cyber Investing Summit , where Fortune's Robert Hackett and I hosted panels this week, there was a feeling the tide is starting to turn against hackers. The arrival of new biometric and network technology, combined with the rise of cybersecurity focused investors like Strategic Cyber Ventures , mean Internet security is improving rapidly.
Finally, the HyperLedger Projecta relatively new non-profit group that focuses on blockchainis growing quickly, and getting support from everyone from big banks to IBM to independent developers. If the project succeeds, the result will be a governing body to make blockchain technology secure and easy to use for everyone. In the long term, it could mean we'll all be using a blockchain-based Internet that is superior to the broken web we use today.
Yes, all this feels far off. But as tech writer Walt Mossberg observed in a farewell column titled "The Disappearing Computer," we're in a transition period, and waiting as companies create subtle new types of software that are "simultaneously more intelligent and more secure." The future, as it always does, will arrive.
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Blockchain Offers Hope for the Broken Internet - Fortune