Scenario One. A business person is on a visit to another city to negotiate a deal and carries both a Smartphone and a tablet. This involves an overnight stay at a city hotel and while he is having a meal a thief breaks into his room and steal the tablet. This is a serious breach of his company's security because all the information he will need to negotiate a deal are in that tablet's memory. It contains the cost settings for the company's manufacturing - something that would be of great value to a competitor. This theft is little short of a disaster.
Scenario Two. A person who distributes illegal drugs is asleep in bed when the police kick in his front door and perform a raid. He runs a very careful distribution network and there are no drugs to be found in his home, but the police seize both his Smartphone and his tablet - and they contain incriminating information that the police know will result in a conviction when he is put before a court. This is the only form of evidence - and he knows that he faces a long period of incarceration.
Today - the relentless march of progress in electronics offers a solution to both of these problems. It is now possible to remotely wipe data from Smartphones and Tablets by reverting the device back to factory settings. This removes all photos, videos, texts, emails and notes - and returns the device to it's pristine state when it was first purchased from a store.
All that is required is for the Smartphone or Tablet to be able to receive a signal - and that opens up a wide range of moves and counter moves that will be brought into play by both sides of the legal divide.
To the dismay of the police, they are now finding that evidence locked away and awaiting court trial is mysteriously blank when it is contained in seized Tablets and Smartphones. In the past, such evidence was usually stored in "evidence rooms "within a police station and now they realise that they will need to invest in radio frequency shielded evidence bags to secure captured information from the instant of seizure. It will also be necessary to have shielded evidence rooms in which seized Tablets and Smartphones can be examined by the police to unravel the contained information, otherwise they will be prone to being wiped while in police hands. In many cases, court action will be abandoned because the evidence to obtain a conviction no longer exists.
This technology will be invaluable in the business world. Hackers are constantly attacking the computer records of large public companies despite extensive firewalls and multiple password protection. The fact that some sensitive information in mobile form has been needed by executives has increased the risk factor. The security firms that offer protection will be quick to see an opportunity here to offer their skills to make stolen electronic devices safe - if they are quickly advised of the theft.
No doubt that same solution will be sought by the underworld. No doubt we will see procedures put in place to send an alert to a security company when other than an authorised person seeks entry to a Smartphone or Tablet - and set in motion action to wipe it clean for security reasons. The wise would have duplicate information on another recording device locked away in a bank vault in another country - to later repair the damage.
It seems to be a fact of life that - whatever human ingenuity is able to create - other counter action by opposing human ingenuity is able to undo. There never will be a safe that a cracksman can not open and there never will be a place in cyberspace that hackers can not reach,
Welcome to the electronic world of the future - where the only place that secrets can be totally secure - is when they never leave the human mind !
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