What you need to know about cybersecurity: ‘Expect a future where a computer doesn’t just connect you, but can also be a weapon’
Says Red Branch Consulting founder and former Homeland Security official PAUL ROSENZWEIG, author of ‘Cyber Warfare: How Conflicts in Cyberspace are Challenging America and Changing the World’: “If a world without gasoline or beef was not sufficiently scary, imagine this: Your heart monitor kills you or all of a sudden your car won’t brake. Everything — and I do mean everything — that is connected to the Internet is potentially vulnerable.
“And increasingly, everything you rely on each day is connected. That prospect ought to convince you that cybersecurity is serious.
“Here’s a story worth telling: I have a friend David who is a diabetic. For years, he had to prick his finger, test his blood and inject insulin. Then he got an insulin pump, which changed his life. And about five years ago, he got one of the new Internet-connected, programmable pumps, which was even better — no more visits to the doctor just got blood tests.
“And then some hackers demonstrated that they could crack the security on his insulin pump and give him a fatal — or maybe just near-fatal — dose of insulin. His lifesaving device just became his own self-assassination machine.”
