Posted by
Barry Siskind
Community Manager
Exhibition industry guru Bob Dallmeyer’s favourite quote is that “At the end of the day all an organizer has is their good reputation and a data base.” But, what happens when that data base is in jeopardy?
Recently there have been stories in the media about large institutions like Sony and Citibank who have had their systems breached by hackers. Could the same thing happen to your data base that is so crucial to the success of your trade fair? Are there steps, programmes or tools we should be taking to protect ourselves? Are some solutions better than others? Does the potential of a system breach affect your confidence in “the Cloud?”
This is something we should be talking about.
There’ve been hot wars upon hot wars (WW1, WW2, Korea, Nam, Iraq, Afghan., etc).
In the new global economy where socialism, capitalism and hybrids of communism have been created, we have a new title to match the current era of cold warring nations: “Market Wars.”
Every war creates spies. To assume hackers haven’t the capability to access ‘clouds’ is either infinitely ignorant, or a premature assumption.
Shall we all build our digital foundations on this vaporous display of naïveté? I’d say cloud computing is far from secure – if not now, whenever a spy with a better programmer accesses (absconds with) your enterprise – lock, stock and barrel.
One thought is infallible: distrust lags behind an insecure reality. Only then (after a “breach”) are the economies of ownership and control balanced against the loss we experienced.
Technology is always laudable at the outset and laughable in the hindsight.