The New World of Physical Cyber Defense Protection

Amid the tsunami of cybersecurity spending, there is remarkably little consensus on reliable sources for cyber defense, protection, and security information. With cybersecurity spending estimated to rise to more than $170 billion annually by 2020, according to a Forbes magazine estimate, where in all of economic and industry history has so much been invested with so little consensus or assurance of knowledge?

Even a glance at this situation reveals that the lack of cyber defense, protection, and security information itself is part of what impels the phenomenal rates of spending. The highest stakes imaginable, and an unprecedented circumstance of mystery, face us simultaneously wherever we work – in business, industry, public utilities, military service, or government – because cyber defense, protection, and security information is so new, so ever-changing, and so devoid of recognized authorities. The Department of Homeland Security only just defined its own strategy for cybersecurity on May 16, 2018.

How could such an accomplished global business community arrive at such a disadvantage as this, lacking clear sources of cyber defense, protection, and security information? Analogies are called for to see it clearly, because rarely, if ever, have human beings confronted circumstances like these in all the experience and discernment of history.

The 21^st Century Version of the Wild, Wild West

The “non-physical space” of digital platforms and microwave communication was, perhaps, an even greater unknown, when we first encountered it, than the unexplored American West in the 19^th century, because it is invisible. Our predecessors confronted at the 100^th meridian such a distinct drop-off from any world familiar to Europeans, when they ventured beyond a line that runs just west of the Missouri-Kansas border, and extends fully north and south from Mexico to Manitoba, that it represented a world as new as another planet. The terrain, climate, ground composition, and rainfall were so thoroughly unknown to anyone of European descent that the geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell tried hard to convince Congress in 1878 to lay out water and land-management districts there that would have crossed state lines.

Powell’s proposal went nowhere because of the states’ preference for complete independence in their efforts to develop the new territories. Organization and focus were sacrificed in favor of independent – and often ad hoc – decisions. Yet, we find even today, as populations there typically decline beyond the big cities, that they could not remain independent of nature or science.

The analogy might at first seem distant – from the perspectives of both history and technology – yet on closer inspection, doesn’t it have some lessons worth observing for cyber defense, protection, and security information?

Actionable Cyber Defense, Protection, and Security Information

Paradoxically, one of the most useful sources we see for cyber defense, protection, and security information is from the old “phone company.” The continuing series of Cybersecurity Insights from AT&T has proven to be at least a good starting point. But the biggest, most widespread help we can offer in this field has to do with a whole, vast sector of the cybersecurity perimeter that is, to a shocking extent, left unguarded. That unguarded sector is the physical connection, the billions of ports and connectors that enable us to operate our computer data and information systems effectively every day.

It is a head-scratcher that seems as big as the apparent contradictions between quantum physics and the visible, Newtonian world. When cybersecurity concerns exploded, the industry attention to address them was initially devoted almost entirely to the non-physical space. The USB ports and system connectors, that were within sight and reach of all of us, went unattended. This untended physical sphere of cyber defense, protection, and security information has been likened to a homeowner leaving the front door open, while continually and aggressively increasing one’s spending on window sensors, motion detectors, video monitors, and remote home-management systems. No matter how sophisticated the solutions, the front door is still wide open.

Expertise and Products to Protect the Front Door

At The Connectivity Center, we have used our unequalled perspective on the nexus between users and technology to assemble, develop, maintain, and expedite a resource for cyber defense, protection, and security information and products you can rely on immediately. Our experience, perspective, and ongoing awareness extends from the time when servers began replacing mainframes, and dispersed computer operations vastly and rapidly expanded the exposure to mishaps and threats, all the way through today and tomorrow in an unbroken continuum of expertise. And this perspective is yours, at your service.

From the network port locks and USB port locks that facilitate mobility and collegial computer utility, to the cables that connect computers to networks, The Connectivity Center is ready today, with an array of products and knowledge that can help you secure that front door of cybersecurity, and answer your need for cyber defense, protection, and security information.

Our Link Lock connectors and the Link Lock Hub serve not only as secure USB connections, but also lock your devices so that they cannot be removed without authorized access. Our Smart Keeper collection of computer and laptop security devices protect the ports through which some of the biggest, most historic cyberattacks were perpetrated, and where even casual contamination occurs somewhere every hour of every day. And these are just two of the hundreds of ways The Connectivity Center uses our experience, quality, variety, value, and versatility to offer you protection for the vital flow of data on which your enterprise depends.