Rise of the AI and ML Era and Privacy Concerns

Rise of the AI and ML Era and Growing Privacy Concerns

I'm no conspiracy theorist like certain CEOs out there but I believe that this whole machine learning (ML) technology could be used with both good and bad intentions if we're not too careful with who we release the technology to. Machine learning has potential to learn our social behaviors and essentially replace our cyber presence. It also has good intensions to be used as a marketing tool to improve sales of a under utilized product as one could hope it to be used. That along with search engine optimization (SEO) strategies have the potential to be unstoppable to an unknowing public. Knowledge is power; especially when you know exactly how much data there is about A PERSON based off years of publicly released data based off there online habits which we voluntarily give up daily, hourly, minute-by-minute, second-by-second, and so on. The rituals that we have of being online slowly adds up and private company's make millions off selling it to third-parties looking to sell us their products and services...and the cycle never ends. We lose money without even knowing it, through the nose or in this case through your fingertips.

Artificial Intelligence and the Cloud

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud based technology, now there's even more data available to companies and unfortunately, also hackers that scour the dark web in search for your breached data. Hackers do this on tools widely available. You have to go to extreme measures just to remain anonymous or scrub your tracks.  Oh yea and just hope and hope again that you don't screw up your privacy by remaining disciplined on your private routine that will not be discussed here (for privacy concerns😁). 

This is where cyber security is a growing need, I mean before it was made famous by Russia's invasion of Ukraine currently. From anti-virus all the way down to application patch management for third-party tools that tend to be buggy and invite strangers over to pick up your scraps of where you left off on your devices security. Left unsecured, this is a most likely candidate for financial loss of some sorts. Whether it be as direct as a payout from a decryption key that unlocks your data from a ransomware infection or stealing some company secrets from a top official without them knowing it. This type of spying can be found anywhere on the planet. Thanks to some tools, for example, you could be physically seated in the US but your online presence registers you in Demark, then a few minutes later in Hong Kong. Even an unknowing host can have malware planted on their devices that makes them a part of something bigger, a botnet, which can attack any server on the planet at a scheduled time. A plot to take down a large target. Thousands of infected computers and devices can fire a denial of service attack in order to overwhelm a server and resources.

Data collection is made even more a problem with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and mobile phones. With users on their phones continuously providing data on their own usage patterns grow to an all time high. Feeding the AI more data about users habitual behaviors for the taking. With the use of cloud based technology this data is wrapped around the globe, as data is replicated from data center to data center to account for disaster recovery. With the advancement of bandwidth on fiber optic channels, replication can be scheduled sooner rather then later. That means your data can be inspected as soon as it enters another countries jurisdiction and back. Cloud providers usually give business customers a choice on where their data resides which can increase the level security/privacy on their digital footprints or can limit them to a geographic disaster zone. A choice that businesses IT department's can make on their data. This is of course less disaster prone then having business data reside on premise only.  

Quantum Computing FTW!!!

The security concerns of a persons data on the internet grow immensely as data is sold to third-party as soon as it leaves your house hold. The need for encryption is growing rapidly for personal and business use. With post-quantum encryption now available, the encrypted data is secured on a massive scale. With quantum physics available in the mathematical equations, the calculations of normal grade encryption is now suddenly made more complex. Making quantum computing the true encryption standard of the future. This technology can be made useful in say for example in military for applications such as counter terrorism; decrypting messages of a lower grade algorithm.