Peter A Clarke

The current edition of the Economist has a special report on cybersecurity.  For those practising in privacy law it should be mandatory reading.  It gives a brilliant synopsis (as the Economist can do so well) of the key issues and future developments. For those just interested in cyber security it should also be mandatory reading.

In the series of articles:

• Defending the digital frontier
• Hackers Inc
• Zero-day game
• Digital disease control
• Crashing the system
• Not my problem
• Home, hacked home
• Prevention is better than cure

it focuses on the key aspects of cybersecurity; from those who attempt to breach security (criminals, hackers for fun or for government), those who try to protect systems and data (businesses and government and the software companies) and what is and should be done.

It is a very valuable contribution to the developing issue of cyber security.  It is interesting to note that the Economist strongly supports mandatory data breach notification, as is the case in most states in the USA and Europe.  And not the case in Australia.