Six cyber-enhancing technologies you should know
by: John Carlson
Cybersecurity threats cannot be addressed by just educating consumers and businesses. The government and the private sector must also implement technologies and tools that, collectively and in combination, can mitigate our cybersecurity risks. This is happening in an environment of rapid change, which also means that as the velocity and sophistication of cyber attacks increases, those who defend against these attacks must be equally adaptable.
Fortunately, positive advances are being made, including these six promising technologies and developments that can enhance cybersecurity:
- Chips. Adopting chip-based technologies in payment cards that would replace those magnetic stripes could go a long way in eliminating counterfeiting and reducing the damage from breaches at merchants. Also, chips in the form of secure elements embedded in mobile phones are critical in order to store sensitive information, such as encryption keys.
- Tokenization. Tokenization makes stolen data useless by substituting sensitive data, such as an account number, with a non-sensitive equivalent that has no exploitable value. Expanding the use of tokenization could make breached data unusable for perpetuating fraud.
- Encryption. Encryption technologies encode information in ways that only authorized parties can read, and usually requires a decryption key to recover the contents of the encrypted text. Expanding use of this tool could help protect more sensitive information, even if the information is stolen.
