Looking Back and Forth

It’s the time of year to look at what was and contemplate on what will be. In Gartner the latter process has been formalized through the series of predict documents we publish towards the end of the year. Since a few years we precede these individual documents with a top predictions note that this year was titled “Plan for a Disruptive, but Constructive future” (press release). An important theme of this year’s predict was the rise of digital business, but also some of the darker sides of this. My section spoke about how – in the 2020 timeframe – the labor reduction effect of digitalization may cause social unrest and a quest for new economic models in several mature economies. Early signals of such movements may be larger-scale versions of Occupy Wall Street-type movements and increasing replacement of traditional paid jobs with bartering-based systems and increased reliance on volunteers in areas such as patient care.

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Target Claims Strong Encryption Saves Their Neck

It seems Target got breached, really seriously, and 40 million credit card pins were stolen. However – and here is the ‘glass half full’ part in what otherwise would be a complete disaster – since the master key for the encryption of the credit card pins was separate from the breached Target system, it is claimed the bad guys cannot unencrypt those pins. Target is therefore able to claim a kind of ‘Safe Harbor’: that the key to decrypt the data could not have been taken, and “The most important thing for our guests to know is that their debit card accounts have not been compromised due to the encrypted PIN numbers being taken”.

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Target Claims Strong Encryption Saves Their Neck

It seems Target got breached, really seriously, and 40 million credit card pins were stolen. However – and here is the ‘glass half full’ part in what otherwise would be a complete disaster – since the master key for the encryption of the credit card pins was separate from the breached Target system, it is claimed the bad guys cannot unencrypt those pins. Target is therefore able to claim a kind of ‘Safe Harbor’: that the key to decrypt the data could not have been taken, and “The most important thing for our guests to know is that their debit card accounts have not been compromised due to the encrypted PIN numbers being taken”.

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