"Many politicians may also lack the scientific knowledge base with which to consider technological issues."

This seems to be an increasing problem, because politicians don't have the knowledge to evaluate the information given to them by their advisers or we see them embarking on technical projects which are not technically achievable. For instance, the S.A. battery scam and the Snowy electricity storage project. (sorry to wander off topic)

David

If you think the current cyber crime is scary, take a look and consider what the Stuxnet computer bug, designed by the NSA and District 800 of the Israeli military has done, will do and is probably the big brother of the current Malware clone, see:

"Operation Olympic Games was a covert and still unacknowledged campaign of sabotage by means of cyber disruption, directed at Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States and likely Israel. As reported, it is one of the first known uses of offensive cyber weapons."

Additionally I highly recommend watching the following Utube video and consider it terrifying implications for us all:

http://youtu.be/Yc7Tk3mwM38

Also consider as we seem to further embrace IT and AI, these are the very things which will increasingly take humans out of the working environment, eventually leading to automation across all sectors of our lives. How do you maintain an economy as we know it without money being earned and people participating in employment. I just don't get it?

Watch the video above and be very scared.

Have a nice day all

Yes, and clearly not assisted by outsourcing services. With foreigners with very different morals given almost unfettered access to sensitive data!?

As for online banking, it might be convenient, save the banks trillions, enable them to shut down the less profitable regional and rural banks?

And given the next boom will be the food boom, nearly as shortsighted and dumb, as deliberately decimating country co-ops, with pernicious policies designed to hollow out rural Australia along with the blue collar set that used to man the butter factories/sugar refineries etc. For diabolically dumb ideological reasons alone.

Those where the days, when we had a floor price under most rural produce and co-ops processing farm products, from acre for acre, vastly more productive family farms, and we were the third wealthiest nation on earth; and a creditor one at that.

But then we still owned a bank, a telco and all our power stations reticulation etc. And old fashioned systems not connected in such a way that a villain tapping away on a keyboard in downtown St Petersburg, couldn't interrupt or cripple with a few keystrokes.

We surely fixed a patently broken economy. We went from the third wealthiest nation on earth, with no debt just debtors, to somewhere south of 30, with record foreign, domestic and government debt, even after the fire sale of much public property and amenity!

Ain't progress and ultra conservative ideology wonderful, given the carefully thought through outcomes and the decimation of the bush/regional and rural Australia; and a growing structural deficit.

A very wise man once said, doing what you've always done while expecting a different outcome is the very definition of insanity. As has been the fire sale of our economic sovereignty!

When the food boom hits these shores, who will be the beneficiaries, us or our foreign masters or myriad cyber crooks?

We can do something about cyber security, just not by outsourcing it to those who may well be the same slum dog millionaires (smiling, affable, well met, villains) threatening it for financial gain?
Alan B.

Just consider how big a potential cashless society will be.

Hackers,scammers, other criminals will have a field day with your data and money it won't take long for the banks to stop repaying victims of fraud as they do now.

Hmmm, I had hoped the author might have been a computer security expert.
I have a question for which I would like an authoritative answer.

Is Linux really as immune as it seems to be to hackers and malware ?
I have been running it for more than ten years, without any protection
except what is built in. I have never had a virus or Trojan or similar.
I have had a Linux bulletin board running 24hr/365 for years non stop while
the internet modem was active and never had a problem.

I do have a scan program which I have run two or three times over
the last three years I have had it. It never found anything.
AVG and the like are not used or indeed available.

I understand a large number of web sites run the Linux server Alpha
I think it is called.
Anyway Linux does seem to be very solid.
For the curious Linux is a derivative of Unix some 30 years ago or so.

Bazz - Is Linux really as immune as it seems to be to hackers and malware ?

The answer is no.

Some of the reasons are.
Linux can be considered the poor mans Microsoft, so if you are going to learn how to break into a house do you teach yourself how to break into the rich mans house or poor mans house.

Like the first Microsoft has so many more users than Linux so which one would you hack?

Most banks and large organizations use Microsoft somewhere around 8% use xp which is very old and easy to hack or find tools to hack it with.

Basically if enough money, confidential data etc is held on linux systems the hackers will go for it, at present it is not worth the time for most crims.

Also Microsoft came equipped with back doors people knew them then told others who told others and on it goes who made YouTube videos how to do it.