5: Protocols, Technology & Infrastructure
Develop new protocols and technology and roll out new infrastructure to obfuscate Internet communications Other Information:
The hard part. The scariest part of the surveillance state is that it has tapped the backbone of the Internet. Every connection
from every computer and smart phone can be logged. Even encrypted packets have to have clear text headers to be routed over
the Internet. The surveillance state can garner amazing amounts of intelligence from collecting this meta data. A journalist
and his source can be connected, an attorney and her client, or a CFO and an acquisition candidate, or a Congressperson and
his lobbyist, are all subject to linkage analysis. There are several systems today that seek to obfuscate Internet communications,
but they are becoming increasingly suspect as even Tor was recently compromised in a major bust. Making multiple encrypted
hops to avoid tracking is expensive in terms of latency and download times. New protocols and technology will need to be developed
and new infrastructure rolled out.
Stakeholder(s):
- IT Security Industry: What does this mean for the growth of the IT security industry? It means a ten fold increase in spending and a doubling in
the number of products and services.
- IT Organizations: Look at the numbers. The very best IT organizations report spending 6-8% of their budget on security. That is going to have
to double in the short term to counter the threat of the surveillance state, just to account for the deployment and management
of encryption everywhere.
- Telecom Companies: Telecom costs will rise dramatically to pay for the new infrastructure to obfuscate traffic. Those are the thought leading
enterprises. All the rest have to play catch up.
- Gartner: Gartner sizes the entire IT spend at $3.3 trillion and security infrastructure spending at $60 billion in 2012 with an 8.4%
growth rate. In order to counter the surveillance state that growth rate will need to quadruple to 24%. Extrapolated to ten
years IT security spending will be $639 billion by 2023 - a tenfold increase. Growth rates of this magnitude are going to
change the IT landscape, not just security. The ramifications are well worth contemplating.
- Investors: Now would be a very good time to make strategic investments in IT security companies, as many Private Equity companies are
beginning to recognize. Even poorly managed companies can thrive in a fast growth environment.
- Policy Makers: Politicians, think tanks, and NGOs have to become well educated in the implications of a surveillance state and the technologies
being developed to counter the new reality. Voting for legislation to make the use of countervailing technology illegal may
fly in the face of popular sentiment.
- Think Tanks
- NGOs
- Universities: This type of growth will have far reaching impacts on the job market for college graduates.
- Computer Science Departments: Computer science departments will have to teach secure software development practices and graduate security specialists. Reach
out to large technology vendors for research grants to develop secure communications and networking infrastructure.
- Businesses: The surveillance state is going to have a dramatic impact on your operating costs as you rush to re-comply with your audit
regimes.
- Security Vendors: Revise your product road maps today to account for a dramatic increase in demand for surveillance proof technology. Cyber
crime, cyber espionage, and even cyberwar, are no longer the next big thing.
- Security Practitioners: Learn what end-to-end security and zero-trust means. Look at your architectures to see what investment it will take to get
to these end states.
- Consumers: Pay attention to the new spate of vendors that will rise to replace the Lavabits and SecureCircles. They may be off-shore.
In the meantime start using proxies for web browsing and and switch to the two factor authentication offered by the major
web services.
- Lavabits
- SecureCircles
- Google: Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Twitter. It's up to you to fix a problem we now know you were complicit in creating. Push back
on the legal and legislative side while at the same time put your best minds to work on the problem of regaining the trust
of your users.
- Yahoo!
- Facebook
- Twitter
- NSA: Under the veil of secrecy and a compliant legislature and judiciary you have profited tremendously from an intelligence bubble.
That bubble will burst. Ten years from now you will not have access to all communications of all people. Make plans for winding
down the surveillance state. You have already done untold damage to the country you are striving to protect. If you continue
the current path you will bankrupt us. http://www2.itif.org/2013-cloud-computing-costs.pdf
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