This week, Amit Yoran, President, RSA, testified before the United States House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on an Oversight and Investigations hearing entitled, “Deciphering the Debate Over Encryption: Industry and Law Enforcement Perspectives.”
This is a complex issue – the hearing raised many important points. Law enforcement needs to be able to prosecute crimes, and on the other hand, we must preserve our nation’s security, privacy, and economic competitiveness.
Amit Yoran testified that creating “back doors” in all encryption is not only impossible to achieve, but it also would have the unintended consequence of fundamentally weakening the security of the Internet infrastructure we all rely on – impacting both national security and public safety.
In his blog published this week, he wrote, “Good encryption is the fundamental building block for good cyber security; without the availability of good encryption, those defending vital U.S. networks and systems would be at a massive disadvantage. Exceptional access increases complexity and introduces new vulnerabilities we may have yet to fully understand.”
He also noted that the negative impacts of such a policy would affect tech companies, and every industry, including our critical infrastructure, power and utilities, automotive, manufacturing, healthcare, legal, banking, and financial industries.
We can’t look at this debate as a privacy vs. security question. We need both – and to move the discussion forward, we need continued collaboration between law enforcement and the technology community.
Please read Amit Yoran’s blog on the hearing and find a link to the testimony, here: http://blogs.rsa.com/deciphering-the-debate-over-encryption/
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