The Need for Redundant Cyber Security Solutions
To explore the landscape of cyber security solutions today takes a keen eye and an act of will. It’s hard to make sense of the sheer proliferation of answers to securing the information systems and data networks on which we all depend. It’s not quite chaos, but it could pass for chaos at first glance. We see $170 billion shoveled at cyber security solutions each year, but we don’t see many systematic approaches, much less a persuasive paradigm to guide the effort overall.
What we do see is the widespread recognition that our very way of life it threatened by attacks on the data networks and information systems we depend on for national security fundamental services and utilities, as well as commercial enterprises. Hostile attacks are not the only threats that make cyber security solutions essential. Casual contamination occurs on a daily basis from seemingly innocent – but naïve – associates from within the organizations themselves. Even loyal business employees and well-indoctrinated government and defense agency operatives have proven to barely hesitate to insert contaminated personal mobile devices or even found flash drives into the wide-open USB ports and LAN connectors of their workplace data systems.
The absence of cyber security solutions that include physical devices to prevent hardware-originated attacks and contamination is a yawning gap in most efforts to protect vital data networks and information systems. Practically all the spending on cyber security solutions is devoted to programs and software. Practically all these online cyber security solutions are based on response, not prevention. It’s hard to imagine any other asset in our economy or society that is so poorly protected as to leave the actual, physical access to that asset unguarded.
An Extra Level of Protection
Consider such a simple similarity as protecting the persons we depend on for fundamental services and utilities. Common practice and custom caused safety measures in the workplace to be developed and expanded throughout the industrial age. The hazards of mechanical devices and electrical infrastructure prompted enterprises to adopt safety measures we take for granted today. Thanks to the visible reminders of those hazards in the workplace, safety measure became not only thorough, but also redundant.
Electrical utility workers, for example, initially used steel tree-climbing spikes adopted from lumberjacks, called “spurs,” to climb the wooden, creosote-treated “telephone poles” on which the lines of communication and electrical supply were strung for distribution to install, maintain, and repair them. The skills and strength to use those spurs had to be acquired. Still, even experienced workers were always in danger of falling. Bucket trucks were developed to eliminate this clear hazard. Today electrical workers stand within a chest-deep enclosure, or “bucket,” extended from a long, telescoping, structural boom, to work aloft.
Even after such a clear improvement in safety and security, redundant measures are applied. Electrical workers typically “tie off” with a safety harness when the bucket is placed, before beginning work.
When the stakes are life and death and the hazards are visible, people implement redundant safety measures. Backup is so vital that it might be said there is no such thing as “redundancy.” Echelons, or sequences of safety measures, are the norm.
Why Redundancy?
In the vast and rapidly expanding world of cyber security solutions, a similar evolution is called for. Though the evolution may seem similar, the situation itself appears to be unprecedented. In fact, the high stakes, the speed of development, and the urgency of the threats themselves present a combination that is not really similar at all. Never before has damage threatened that was so widespread, so quick to develop and modify, and so staggering in its potential impact.
Not only is our way of life at stake from the threat of catastrophic damage to the worldwide digital infrastructure, but so is the way forward. It’s not just the status quo that comes to an end if cyber security threats gain the upper hand, it is the whole tool chest on which we have come to depend for progress. So, not only does today require improved and enhanced cyber security solution, but so does tomorrow. Similarly, those threats extend from the macro to the micro, from governments and national security to the enterprising small business down the street.
National security, and the social stability that comes from reliable government resources like defense and police protection, has been proven vulnerable by instances of spyware that stealthily made its way into data and information systems on which defense and intelligence agencies depend.
The fundamental services and utilities on which we depend every day for electricity, water, transportation, and communication are vulnerable to cyber security threats. In fact, it is said that malware might exist currently in electrical distribution systems that only awaits being activated by hostile competitors on the global stage. Malicious code was discovered in the power grid of Ukraine that was capable of controlling electricity substations, turning off power distribution and even damaging equipment remotely.
Businesses, of course, are subject to daily threats from viruses and malware. Ransomware attacks are reported frequently, and they may even be more widespread than we realize, because so many corporations depend on an image of security that would be shattered if a ransomware attack were to be made public. Small businesses, on which half the U.S. gross domestic product and the majority of jobs and job growth depend, face this vast cyber security threat without the benefit of a large IT staff. For cyber security solutions, small businesses, especially, must be vigilant and resourceful.
The Fort Knox of Cyber Security Solutions
Although the nature of wealth in the 21st century might make physical resources like gold seem not only old-fashioned, but even perhaps irrelevant, they are nevertheless quite real, and the repositories where they are protected, like the legendary Fort Knox, are designed with complete perimeters and succeeding layers or echelons of physical protection.
In the digital world, the means and devices for protecting the physical protection of your data ports and connectors that turn your computers into data networks and information systems are what we provide at The Connectivity Center. Some of the most impactful and historically significant digital attacks were implemented through these physical points of entry, and not through the Web.
Here we offer every day an extensive array of cyber security solutions for securing those ports and connectors, and thus completing your cyber defense system. Among those cyber security solutions is our Smart Keeper collection of computer and laptop security devices. In addition to securing your USB ports and network connections, our Link Lock connectors and the Link Lock Hub also lock your devices so that they cannot be removed without authorized access.
The Connectivity Center offers hundreds of other cyber security solutions, including a variety of locking 4K high-speed cables and two kinds of keys for unlocking them, the Enterprise and Professional series of the Smart Keeper USB Port Lock Key. The Professional Series key from The Connectivity Center offers even more. You get effective control for reaching port locks in confined spaces from an ergonomic, retractable housing with anti-static rubber grip, LED light for low visibility work areas, and dual-retractors – main and peripheral – for access to any angle of installation. Key patterns are strictly controlled, yet you can order duplicate keys to suit your own security authorization structure.
The comprehensive collection of cyber security solutions we offer you from The Connectivity Center have been carefully curated, from our unique perspective and experience. The quality, variety, value, and versatility that result from that experience are at your service from The Connectivity Center.
