Читать книгу Cybersecurity For Dummies - Joseph Steinberg - Страница 25

The proliferation of information online and the ability to attack machines all over the world have meant that governments can spy on citizens of their own countries and on the residents of other nations to an extent never before possible.

Furthermore, as more and more business, personal, and societal activities leave behind digital footprints, governments have much easier access to a much greater amount of information about their potential intelligence targets than they could acquire even at dramatically higher costs just a few years ago. Coupled with the relatively low cost of digital storage, advancing big data technologies, and the expected eventual impotence of many of today’s encryption technologies due to the emergence of quantum computing and other cutting-edge developments, governments have a strong incentive to collect and store as much information as they can about as many people as they can, in case it is of use at some later date. It is more likely than not, for example, that hostile governments may have already begun compiling dossiers on the people who will eventually serve as president and vice president of the United States 25 years from now.

The long-term consequences of this phenomenon are, obviously, as of yet unknown, but one thing is clear: If businesses do not properly protect data, less-than-friendly nations are likely to obtain it and store it for use in either the short term, the long term, or both.