ASHLEY MADISON + TARGET / BLOG 1

         I decided to research into “the computer as an instrument of crime” as discussed following page 12 in “Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism” by Robert W. Taylor, Eric J. Fritsch and John Leiderbach. In light of the recent Ashley Madison, a website where users create accounts and chat with others in order to commit adultery affairs, hacking I became interested in how online information can be protected and how it can ultimately be stolen and used against society. I used two medias from CNN.com to fully understand what happened with the hack and what it means for cybersecurity in the future.

         In the article “Ashley Madison hack: The utter end of privacy” written by Jeff Yang for CNN.com, Jeff explains how “the Ashley Madison debacle has brought data invasion to the masses and crowdsourced it” through online tools that allow everyday individuals to search for family members and colleagues within the database’s list of paid members. He states that we are currently living in a post-privacy world and that the only way to hopefully remain unseen or uncovered in the future is to leave tiny, digital footprints. Which is something that many of us under the age of 45 already do not possess.

         In the video “Ashley Madison hack raises questions about security”, Alex Van Someren, a director with investment focus on cybersecurity, discusses how many companies have difficulties securing people’s data online and that banks and credit card companies “probably do it best of all”. He further delves into how the technology exists to keep data online protected and that it is not an “illusion” as prompted by the newsroom host but that the challenge is help companies (and especially start-ups) get a hold of the right tools. Standards are necessary in order for online consumers to be able to be smart about where they are inputting their personal data and can protect themselves individually site-by-site.

         The issue is not only how data is transferred throughout the Internet but also how it is being stored and looked after. A wide range of websites from banking to health care as well as dating sites carry the unmonitored risk to having data hacked into or erased. The Ashley Madison hack is not the first of its kind with Target, the second-largest discount retailing corporation in the United States just having a debit and credit card data leak in 2013 that affected almost 10 million of its customers that has lead to Target requiring chip-and-pin-enabled cards being required for their store brand REDcards, per www.corporate.target.com in April of 2014. These two stories both have brought to light the issue of cybersecurity and push forward the work towards a more safe and secured Internet. I believe that the next step is creating a mandated administrator who gives out titles to certain cites and companies who have the best kind of security out currently and requiring them to consistently update with the times so that scandals such as the Ashley Madison hack and the Target data breach do not occur as frequently.