Sick of ‘Cyber’

NPR is running a series of stories on “cybersecurity,” prompting some to express their exasperation with cybertouting of cyberthreats.


Some of my cyberefforts on that cyberscore are cyberhere, cyberhere, and cyberhere. CyberBen CyberFriedman has written cyberthis and cyberthis.


Sick of “cyber” yet? Good.


Securing computers, networks, and data is important. But there’s no such thing as cyberterrorism, “cyberwar” is what might occur in computing and communications during an actual war, and the bulk of the work is, as Bruce Schneier puts it, boring:

Securing our networks doesn’t require some secret advanced NSA technology. It’s the boring network security administration stuff we already know how to do: keep your patches up to date, install good anti‐​malware software, correctly configure your firewalls and intrusion‐​detection systems, monitor your networks.