Digital Britain plan leaves Infosecurity Adviser bemused

According to Infosecurity Adviser, The Digital Britain paper – penned by Lord Carter and his team, and which sets out the game plan for broadband Britain in the future – has left the editor of Infosecurity Adviser, somewhat bemused.

The problem, says Mike Barwise, is that security is only dealt with in the broadest of brush strokes, whilst the recurring emphasis is digital.

The problem he adds, is that most security breaches are not digital, but analogue in nature, as they are caused by people.

“Whether it be failing to harden a web server to prevent malware injection, clicking on a dodgy link in an unsecured Web browser or leaving documents on trains, information security is fundamentally a human problem,” he explained.

According to Barwise, who has some three decades-worth of experience in the IT industry, the report also makes no mention of the fundamental Internet security problem faced by today’s general public, namely endpoint security.

As a result of the IT security issues, Barwise argues that evolving an effective digital Britain plan is a lot more complex than the authors of the `Digital Britain’ blueprint suggest.

“I have practically never seen, in any office I have visited, anything other than a default installation of Windows on the desktop – and that default is not terribly robust,” he said.

Barwise pointed out that browsing poorly secured legitimate web sites in this configuration can easily result in your computer becoming one of the several million zombies on the net, but improving your security may prevent you running some programs and viewing many web sites that have been created without considering the security implications.

“So in addition to encouraging the sexy innovations that keep the IT market churning, we have to educate not only users but also the application programmers, Web designers and managers of corporate Web sites,” he added.

And developing such a game plan requires the willpower to implement national programmes that take longer than the life of a Parliament to show effect.

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