13 April 2019

Digital Trust: Transparency in a World of Cyber War...

"British police arrested Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday. He had been hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 and was arrested after the Ecuadorian government invited the Metropolitan Police Service into the embassy to remove him. Assange was initially arrested for jumping bail in 2012, but the Metropolitan Police Service subsequently announced that he had been "further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities."

After Assange's arrest, the US Justice Department unsealed its indictment against him. The indictment focuses on Assange's role in helping Chelsea Manning steal classified information from the US military."
  Wikileaks — Julian Assange arrested, charged with conspiracy to hack US computers Assange had been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012.  Timothy B. Lee - 4/11/2019, 7:05 AM


Someday in the future, there will be a documentary on the timeline and journey of Julian Assange, beyond what has already been produced about his life and his behavior.

It is going to be years before the U.K. legal system finishes the process it has demonstrated in the past with people and issues such as this one.

Yet transparency remains an important topic here.  Whether you are arguing for greater disclosure on what is going on inside government or within the R&D practices of a Global Fortune 1000 public company, transparent communications to the public and shareholders is vital.

The justice systems will finally have the opportunity to produce the information, that will allow every world citizen, to read about the true facts in the Assange case.

Meanwhile, the use of sophisticated exploit tools by nation states and rogue non-state actors continues to disrupt our international e-commerce.  Many variations of these tools are now in the wild as a result of the actions of Wikileaks and are being utilized in nefarious ways.  Here is just one example:

Canadian Police Raid ‘Orcus RAT’ Author
"Canadian police last week raided the residence of a Toronto software developer behind “Orcus RAT,” a product that’s been marketed on underground forums and used in countless malware attacks since its creation in 2015. Its author maintains Orcus is a legitimate Remote Administration Tool that is merely being abused, but security experts say it includes multiple features more typically seen in malware known as a Remote Access Trojan." Krebs on Security

This latest phase of legal justice is about a digital world that exists underground and unknown to the naive "John Q. Citizen" on the street.  Brian Krebs own transition from journalism at the Washington Post to creating his own blog, is only part of this transparency topic.  The Dark Web and all that is comprised of it, is still growing exponentially.

Remember that only about 4-5% of the world wide web (WWW) is what you are seeing in the searchable "Google" Internet.  The other 95% of the Deep and Dark web, is indeed another virtual world.

The international entrepreneur today who has that new great idea, product or service will be operating on the Internet and the World Wide Web.  No different from years before the Internet when you set up your office/business on Mainstreet, in the skyscraper or in the Mall, yet now your reach is instantaneously global.  Your inventory display, banking, accounting, order entry, distribution and delivery is done with software and global communications networks.

Today and since the dawn of the Internet, every new online entrepreneur has a digital spectrum of Operational Risks that must be addressed as part of your daily business.  Those digital trust factors have created new dimensions of risk and resilience strategies, to counter the size and scope of the expanding cyber crime and terrorism enterprises.

So what?

There are several analogies that could be used here to illustrate the issues associated with selling cyber weapons online or the theft and distribution of those digital weapons in our modern society.  Yet the truth is, international commerce is here to stay and it will require new and more rapid action by business and governments.

Simultaneously, the future of our digital trust and the lack of manpower and enforcement resources is spelled out daily in the public press.  How many times have we heard, that there is a shortage of Cyber Security and Risk professionals in the commercial and government workforce?  There is a reason for this.

Transparency of reporting is vital for the public, so they can make more informed decisions.

Balancing the nightly television news with politics, business earnings reports, weather events and the reality of our expanding "Cyber World War," will soon become the new normal...

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