I was recently reviewing a blog post from a friend regarding security. The line that stuck out to me in his post was putting the “No in Innovation”… seriously? You see my friend indicated that it was a security administrator that said this. I can not tell you how angry this makes me. I understand that people are angered by security. I understand the frustration that Tyler feels with the newly implemented FTP site, I get it that you want to submit your app but you can not (my last blog post) but no one should ever feel that it hinders you. I am going to bite my tongue here and say yes…. at this moment in time, security can feel like a pain in your day to day work. You feel hindered, but it is the just the world we live in and “ten years ago” we felt hindered when we needed a password for our voicemail, or a password in general. Ten years ago we did not need to download the amount of patches that we download now, it was a different world ten years ago in so many ways.
I can not preach this enough when I say everything needs to be looked at for what it does. Seat belts have changed over time because the cars, speed limits, and distractions have changed over time. Sure some people think that seat belts hinder them, it wrinkles their clothes, it puts too much pressure against their shoulders and rests in an awkward place. People don’t like them, it hinders their driving and when you don’t put them on, the car makes the most annoying sound! Remember that when seat belts first came out, they were just a lap belt, now look at them. It is a hinderance but they save our lives. Sure you can not compare the two, but you get the point? Technically, security will never stop being a pain in your daily life because we have not stopped creating the information that can be taken. We are now in a digital world and there is no stopping us… it isn’t going to end and as long as there are people out there that want the information, barriers will continue to be built. Just look at all the barriers that we experience in our day to day life that is not digitally focused. All of these hinderances were added to our life over time, because things change. For instance, my day involved going to class. My arms were filled with books and information and my car was locked so I could not easily but all the items down (hinder #1). I bought my coffee and had to sign the credit card slip. it took a while to run the credit card and have it approved and then to sign and get a receipt (hinder #2)… lets not forget what happens when the credit card machines are not working. I had to stop at the red light and wait for it to turn green (hinder #3). I had to lock the car now that I arrived at the office (hinder #4). I got to the office building and had to pull out my badge that was in the bottom of the bag (hinder #5)… point that I am trying to make, it was not even 9:00 am and I already have five things that created a delay and a pain in my day and I was being positive. Everything is relative. You can’t get mad at the security administrator or the person that implemented the ftp site. You can’t think that security is hindering you. If you want to get mad, get angry about the people that want to steal all the data. We need to learn how to live with the extra steps and understand that it is here to stay. Personally, I think we need to have more steps but that is another blog post.
