Government Attempting to Strew the Unimportance of Network Security

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Security amongst the Internet is still a prominent issue in today’s tech world and the government is doing just about nothing about it but tell us it is nothing to worry about. The term that has spread throughout the Internet is the “Heartbleed computer security bug” and it is anything but okay. This has revealed that we do not view Internet security as a big issue which is, in fact a huge issue. This neglect simply demonstrates that we do not care enough for our own safety on the Internet.

According to the Long Island Press, we spend more than $50 billion dollars a year on spying as well as intelligence while software engineers are building defense soft-wares such as OpenSSL which insures that we are protected from hackers as well as assures that our connection is strong. The corporation that supports the OpenSSL software only receives donations of $2,000 a year, which is no where near enough to ensure that we are protected. Steve Marquess, of the OpenSSL software company stated recently that “There should be at least a half dozen full time OpenSSL team members, not just one, able to concentrate on the care and feeding of OpenSSL without having to hustle commercial work” (LongIslandPress) The problem here is that the software company depends solely on those donations that fund the company’s research and development.

Again, this neglect is a mere sign that we are considering this as a non-issue and we are almost completely vulnerable to hackers and software failures. Sites such as Facebook and Google are but two companies that are large contributors to the OpenSSL software company and are affected the most by the “Heartbleed 2014”. These companies code is displayed publicly which puts all of their users at a huge risk of loss of privacy.

The one thing that the government continues to tell us is that we are to frequently change our password in order to prevent the threat of being hacked or in trouble. The NSA says that they had no idea that this was happening and are not concerned that this “issue”, according to them, will be something to worry about. Something that can be noted here is that the risk of your passwords being stolen and used remains much lower than the risk of your password being hacked from a website that were using “broken encryption standards”. Although we are told that we are not at risk, criminals as well as the government have many different ways to obtain your information these days by sending out fake emails, spam, or impersonating emails from your bank.

I do not know how safe I am these days since we are told that this is a non-issue according to the government. I feel as though it is coming to the point where we are never going to be safe while using the Internet, even though just about everything we do is online these days.. Hopefully by changing our passwords often, we will feel like we are going to be safe, even if it is a small feeling of hope. So remember, beware that the websites you use are at risk of obtaining your information, no matter how complicated your passwords may be.