Keeping The Internet Safe Is A Shared Responsibility

Cybercrime is on the rise with new reports daily of databases being hacked, identity theft, and other transgressions happening all over the world, including recent attacks on major telecom providers and large retail corporations in Europe.

This is because of our digital lifestyle. Every day, our population generates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. That’s an enormous amount of data, and it is indicative of the ever-increasing number of compute, sensor, and display devices that surround us.

The risks of surround computing

This era of surround computing is improving the way people around the planet live, work and play. The problem is that law-abiding citizens aren’t the only ones benefiting.One thing that must happen is that the public and private sectors must do more to combat increasing security vulnerabilities. Businesses and individuals must be proactive in protecting their data and networks, and government agencies need to help prevent crime and enforce effective laws and policies.

From individual users to IT manufacturers, network providers, application developers, standards bodies, government regulators, everyone has a role to play.

The good news is many of these parties are starting to work together on technology R&D for IT security protections that are  innovative and practical. For example, AMD, Honeywell, Intel, Lockheed Martin and RSA  co-founded the Cyber Security Research Alliance (CSRA), a private, non-profit research consortium, working with industry experts, academics, and others to establish a research agenda to better secure a technologies such as utilities, communications networks, and other security-sensitive operations that are increasingly targeted by cyber attackers.

Let’s pull together

In Europe, the European Commission is working topromote open and non-proprietary security standards specifically for public and private clouds, while DigitalEurope’s Cloud Council is striving to promote cloud computing across Europe while ensuring that data and privacy are protected. AMD is involved in both of these.

Bringing industry, academic, and public experts and resources together, creates a force multiplier that can help consumers and companies stay ahead of cyber attackers.

Many security technologies are builton AMD products, and we’ve been integrating strong security features into them over the years, so end-user products are more secure.

We also strongly believe that users will have more confidence in technology if security standards are transparent and open to scrutiny. It is in our collective best opportunity to transparently enable correct functionality and strong security assurances, without introducing known vulnerabilities.

We are also working with other technology companies to out-innovate hackers. For instance, as part of our combined technology roadmap with UK-based chip designer ARM, we are working on TrustZone, which aims to provide secure access to online content, and reliable online transactions.

We’re making good progress, but we also realise we’re just one company. The fact is that rapidly evolving security risks in cyberspace cannot be addressed by any one company or government agency. The job is too big for anyone to do alone, and protecting data is a shared responsibility.

As cyber security challenges continue to evolve, we can’t point to others to solve the problem. We need collaborative development to secure cyber space. It’s our responsibility.

Mark Papermaster is senior vice president and chief technology officer, AMD

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