The Big One Is Coming

The Big One Is Coming

A note from me: Everyone once in-a-while I write something but never finish or publish that post. This is one of those times, as I originally started this over 2 years but never finished. With the latest tech breach at Equifax, I’ve dusted this one out of the draft files and finished it off.

If you are in your 50s like I am, you remember air raid drills from your elementary school daze. You’d be in school, the siren would sound, you’d walk to your locker, and squat down. Of course, you learned later on in life that you’d “kiss your ass goodbye.” In the 20th century, the bomb was the “big one” you feared.

In the 21st century, that big boom we’ve heard recently isn’t a bomb (unless the bad haircut man in North Korea does something really, really stupid). It’s the sound of technology crashing all around us. The sound of an airline being grounded because of a computer glitch. The sound of the world’s largest financial markets grinding to a halt because of an unknown technical glitch. It’s the sound of a massive data breach at a major government or at a company like Equifax that likes to tell you what your financial is but couldn’t keep that information protection. It’s the constant sound of the cloud being hacked, almost like thunder coming out of nature’s clouds, not the one man has made.

All these computer safety issues freak me out. I feel like my whole life is an open book, just waiting for someone to open it and steal my it away from me. Our society has become so married to technology that we don’t know how to live without it, which makes us incredibly vulnerable to anyone and everyone who would exploit the complete lack of security that is supposed to be protecting all this digital data. Seems to me that the information super highway has a bunch of on ramps and there doesn’t appear to be any way to get off.

Let me bring this a little closer to home (and home it will be). Cable TV, internet and phone providers are now offering full home security packages. These are not only alarm systems, but gives the homeowner complete remote access to their house via their computer, phone, tablet, whatever floats your digital boat. Gives you the ability to control your lights, appliances, whatever is hooked up to the system.

This sounds so great…right? No so fast. If you have remote access to your home, couldn’t someone else gain that access by hacking the system? And don’t give me this BS about how secure things because let me tell you, they ain’t and this not an original thought. It came up in a discussion I had with someone who works for a large multi-national insurance company and this is one of things they are starting to deal with – remote home invasions.

You get one of these systems, leave your home for an hour, a day, a week, etc, etc, etc.  Just as easily as you can see what’s going on in your house, so can the hackers who are thinking we’ve had our fun with Wall Street, let’s see what’s happening on Main Street. The next thing you know, you come home to a house with no electricity and a fridge full of yuck! Like I said before, this is not something I made up because I’m just not that devious. People who are way smarter than I am are dealing with this stuff and trying to figure out how to make all this technology safe for us all. Newsflash – they can’t.

Everytime you put your personal information out there into the cloud and into cyberspace, just remember – nothing that big stays aloft forever. Eventually gravity (or a computer hacker) causes everything to crash and burn.