Thursday, July 11, 2013

Three levels of internet security

The Japanese government made a silly mistake about internet security.

The Next Web: Japanese officials reportedly use wrong privacy settings on Google Groups, leaking internal memos

It was revealed that Japanese government officials had been using 'Google Groups', an internet sharing service powered by Google, for official use keeping internal information exposed to the public.

The default setting of Google Groups lets the contents readable by others. The officials had failed to change this setting.

It is a quite human error. But the level of the risk is terrible. If an important national secrets  were leaked, the result would be disastrous.

The government sent a notification to official not to use free internet services. I am doubtful that this caution will prevent the next accident.

I think the risk for use of the internet is divided into the 3 levels.

The first, a simple error like this case.
Uploading a private photo such as porn to the public is frequently reported.

Did Anthony Weiner Tweet a Picture of His Weiner?

It is a technical error, so the prevention is also simple, but hardly to be carried out.
The best way is not to use your PC or other devices for a particular purpose. But it is not so easy. Furthermore, some types of errors such as sending an e-mail to a wrong receiver are unavoidable.

The second level is company risk.

The scandal of Mr. Snowden revealed that even Microsoft has been participating in hacking by the US government.

Edward Snowden says Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft gave direct access to NSA

The company you rely on can fail to protect your personal information. Sony Computer Entertainment was hacked to be stolen personal information including the credit card numbers.

PSN got severely hacked, your personal information was stolen

The last way of vulnerability is to administer your own server. Banks have own security system each other. The government should do the same.
However, there is no absolute security on the internet. Official websites of the governments are often cracked by hacking groups.

After all, the ultimate secret is not to be set as easy to copy status. To be quite primitive, the material is the most rigid.

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