20 Years From Now

For an assignment in the graduate certificate program on cybersecurity I’m doing at UNLV, I was asked to respond to the following prompt:

The year is 2039 and you are getting ready to retire from a management position.  Describe some of the technology and innovations now being used in the prevention, response and recovery of cyberattacks.

This gave me the opportunity to imagine one (extreme?) way things could play out over the next 20 years. Here’s my response (note that it was written before Libra was announced or that would probably be part of the response as well):

As I step down from management, I’m pleased to report that the Company is in the best position it has ever been with regard to cybersecurity.  Thanks in large part to UNWISE (United Nations World Identification Security Exchange) we have not had any significant breaches in the last five years.  As you may recall, UNWISE came about in 2029 in part as a response to the Black Friday Offensive of 2026 coordinated by the cybercriminal hacking syndicate known as the AFANG gang. Following a pre-Thanksgiving coordinated breach of Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, using zero day vulnerabilities, the AFANG gang wreaked havoc and made headlines while a smaller hacker group, believed to have been state-sponsored, took advantage of footholds gained through APTs in several financial institutions to execute a time bomb virus on the morning of Black Friday.  After shoppers made the frantic rush through the stores to grab their doorbusters, the first signs of the attack showed up as payment systems rejected every transaction. It was estimated that $30 billion in damages were experienced worldwide as a result of that breach.  That fateful Black Friday lead to major changes not just in the cybersecurity realm, but also in the socio-economic landscape of the world.  The Black Friday Offensive resulted in the financial industry moving to a blockchain based system based on Bitcoin that avoided the pitfalls of relying on central ledgers.  With each transaction being recorded at multiple blockchain nodes, there is no longer the possibility for a group of hackers to wipe out the entire system. With the financial industry leading the way, the AFANG companies and retail sector were anxious to come up with a better security system.

That clamor for a solution resulted in many different techniques being developed and implemented, some of which we still see in use today.  For example, subcutaneous NFC implants capable of acting as a key for two-factor authentication was widely proposed and adopted by some industries (like the medical industry due to its ease in tracking patients, etc), but did not gain full support by a large portion of the population who believed the implants to be the mark of the beast foretold by the Bible. 

As political bodies tend to do, it took some time before there was any agreement about what could be done to improve worldwide cybersecurity.  The official UN resolution creating UNWISE was precipitated by a North Korean defector who revealed that North Korea had obtained access to among other things, the DOD’s cloud, as well as mountains of DNA data from 23andMe and Ancestry.com to be able to take advantage of the implementation of biometric solutions in cybersecurity.  After forensic investigations confirmed the defector’s report, the UN Security Council decided that the only real way to securely maintain data would be by identifying every person on Earth using biometrics, DNA, and government assigned identification numbers.  UNWISE was proposed and a protocol was setup for establishing a ledger of the population of the world with as much information as possible about each citizen.  When the EU, known for their protection of privacy in the 2010s, jumped on board, a large portion of the member states were quick to follow and ratify the resolution.  By 2035, 175 of the member states were committed at least in part to participating in the exchange.  

With the exchange, it has become easier than ever to authenticate who is accessing data.  Forensic investigations make it easy to narrow down who had access and caused the problem.  While the system is not perfect, it seems to be doing its jobs.  Taking into account the death rate and some other factors, it is estimated that the ledger will contain some data on at least 99% of the world’s population by 2050.  

Of course this was all made possible with the help of quantum computing, AI, and Elon Musk.  Not only did Musk fund the founding of neural link computing, but his company’s foray into space exploration made it possible for the use of cold storage for data on Mars using special satellites not accessible from anywhere but the LC3 (lunar communications command center).  Now, while breaches are fewer and farther between, we can simply recover data by retrieving backups through that system.  

All in all, I believe we are on the right track with regard to cybersecurity.  If you would have told me 20 years ago that there would be a ledger with the information about all the world’s citizens used to prevent cyber attacks and that we retrieve our backups from Mars via the moon, I would have said you were crazy, but here we are.  I look forward to hearing what developments you all make over the next 20 years as I enjoy my retirement on the beaches of Maui.