Interesting Snippets from 2012-05-12

• Cyber-security: Difference Engine: Swamped with data | The Economist

  According to IDC’s Digital Universe Study, some 1.8 sextillion (1021) bytes of data were added to the world’s memory banks last year, about a third of which passed through American networks. Not even companies that specialise in “big data”, let alone government agencies, could hope to analyse such an inundation.

  The task of analysing the world’s data to identify potential cyber-threats “has gone from difficult to impossible,” concludes “Future Tense”, a study by Arizona State University, the New America Foundation and Slate, an online magazine. “This shift completely redefines the cyber-security problem,” noted John Villasenor, a professor of electrical engineering who is also a fellow of the Brookings Institution, an American think tank, in a posting on Slate last week. “The idea underpinning CISPA—that the government should sit at the centre of the cyber-security universe, collecting all the information about cyber-threats, analysing it and dispensing solutions—will no longer work.” There are just too many data points today.

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