The letter from TalkTalk

[Kaz]

Sound advice there Suff - thank you

[meriad]

A guarantee that this will never happen again would have been enough.

The problem is, that kind of guarantee can never be given - if a hacker is determined they will find a way in. Not even the Pentagon is safe

[Kaz]

That's true, unfortunately

[Aggers]

The problem is, that kind of guarantee can never be given - if a hacker is determined they will find a way in. Not even the Pentagon is safe

Too true. It makes me wonder why Computers have come to dominate our lives, being so vulnerable.
God help us all when the next world war comes along, and the enemy starts the use of cyber warfare.
We'll be wishing then we had kept to pen and ink.

[Workingman]

A guarantee that this will never happen again would have been enough.

The problem is, that kind of guarantee can never be given - if a hacker is determined they will find a way in. Not even the Pentagon is safe

I know, I know, I was just getting something off my chest.

However, there are gatekeeping methods to make things harder. Don't keep all my eggs in one basket is one.

Aggers, if there is a way out there is also a way in. We are as good as, if not better, than most at finding the way in; as was the case in the pen and paper age. Computers are not a problem so long as they are not the only method of communication.

[Suff]

Also it is absolutely mandatory now to encrypt users data. Many organisations have not done that. Because they don't they become targets.

As for using computers.... We have stepped from replacing 1,000 bookkeepers who took 3 months to create one financial report, to 1 computer which gives you 100 different reports a second, to computers facilitating a lot of what we want to do in our lives.

It's a natural extension but an anathema to people who grew up with an analogue life. The internet enables us to connect to everyone else but has been extended into very frivolous time wasting trivia for no other purpose than making a quick profit.

I'm sure that those who created the railways would not have approved of the general people going on holidays in the way they did 50 years later. Ditto those who created air travel who would not have approved of the way we just jet off on holidays. The people who drove the "horseless carriage" and what they would have thought of the school run.....

It's easy to say "computers this and computers that". The reality is they just do what we tell them to and remove a lot of the effort involved in getting things done. Most cars today have at least 2 or 3 computers in them. All cars made today have at least one, this is our life now. Time to make it better rather than trying to stop it.

[Kaz]

Absolutely right!