Cyber Security-Privacy: Are We All Living In Glass Houses? Can I Get Some Privacy, Please?

Levent Ertaul, California State University, East Bay

Stevenson Hall 1300
12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

Cyber security, cyberwar, hacking, privacy, and governmental/personal data breaches… We keep hearing these with increasing frequency repeatedly. This creates a cyber anxiety everywhere. On top of that we, as ordinary people started to learn that corporations and governments all around the world keep track of our personal data. For example, mobile phones constantly provide information about our location to service providers. Google knows what we are thinking about from our personal online searches. Facebook can see who our friends are. Yahoo knows the type of news we are interested in. Our online shopping patterns are recorded. Governments are launching surveillance programs to collect our personal data on the cyber space. AS the list goes on... It is as if we are all living in glass houses in which we do not have any privacy or cannot keep any secrets anymore. Cyber security issues affect everyone. Most of all they affect us individuals. That is why ignorance is not bliss in cyber security. Every day we face new questions, new challenges from our rights and responsibilities as citizens of the cyber world to how to protect ourselves, if we can, from new types of security threats. In this talk, I will try to explain vulnerabilities and security issues in the cyber space along with what we can and cannot do to protect ourselves.