Hacking: The Case for Prevention Rather Than Cure

When the movie Sneakers came out in 1992, hacking wasn’t considered a real threat; it was almost something cool that really clever kids did just to prove they could.  More than two decades later, hacking has taken on a far more sinister tone and become a much more profitable profession. With breaches continuing to happen at an alarming rate, the proliferation of cyber-crime is a huge threat to corporate organisations and individual consumers alike. In a bid to counter this current trend, and threat, we go back five centuries to the Dutch philosopher, Desiderius Erasmus to borrow his idea of ‘prevention is better than cure’.
The pace of technology
One of the reasons why there are so many breaches is because of the increasing volume of connected devices – a result of technological advances. We live in a world where new devices, platforms, applications or systems are launched every day, each of which presents a new surface attack area and unfortunately without any regulation or industry standards, security has been less of a priority than getting these new products to market. Developers are still measured by how quickly they can write application code and therein lies the problem; security, unfortunately, is often an afterthought and developers are usually involved in the process far too late.
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