I’m not sure any of us are adequately prepared for how fast and complex the world has gotten, and unfortunately, it’s about to get worse.
I think of myself as a fairly tech-savvy person, but there are more innovations than I can track or comprehend. I know a lot about social media, but I can’t keep up with the release of every new site, tools, or app.
Recently, a vulnerability in a technology called OpenSSL called The Heartbleed Bug has left nearly 60% of the web open to being hacked and tracked…and it’s still not fully patched…and it’s been open for nearly two years. Virtually every internet user was exposed in some way.
Last year Target got hacked and millions of credit card numbers were stolen.
We’ve reached the complexity breaking point
I have 1000’s of passwords when you consider my own web presence/activity combined with that of my company, combined with my client’s accounts. The heartbleed bug means that I need to review an enormous list of sites that had vulnerabilities, and go change my passwords on all of them…AGAIN! Then I need to do that for my company and my clients.
This activity alone could require hundreds of hours.
It will undoubtedly cause hundreds of incidents where someone cannot access an account from their mobile phone because they forgot the password.
This would have been a problem 5 years ago, but the problem is substantially worse today…imagine what it will be like in 5 years if we don’t find a way to simplify our world. We cannot have 20,30, or 40 highly secure, complex passwords and still utilize a multitude of devices. My mother has a hard enough time with ONE email password.
We’ve reached the breaking point and I, a highly technological person, feel completely overwhelmed by the problem. What are we going to do?