Thursday, 10 April 2014

What the biggest security breach in the history of the internet could mean for customers

Internet security has been the joint concern of the consumer and businesses since private information began to be stored through web pages. Over the years hackers have found ever more advanced techniques to get around security protocols and get access to web information using this to gain company and individual insights. The latest breach is potentially the most significant breach we have seen as the underlying security certificate system that we have depended upon is the problem itself. OpenSSL certificates are used by 2/3 of the web servers in production today and had widely been considered to be the standard for security on the internet. This process meant companies could install this certification approach safe in the knowledge it was "bulletproof". Unfortunately this week it has come to light that for the past two years this system has been flawed and open to access from hackers who know the hole and gain access in an untraceable way, this has been dubbed "heartbleed". So what for the poor consumer?  We are being advised to change our passwords, but is there really any point as until the OpenSSL Certificates are patched by the companies the hole will still exist. Watch this space and watch your internet space for any suspicious activity as for the next few months we could be in unchartered territory with the web showing some frailty. Epic customer experiences need some sense of security. 


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