By David Jenkin

When Marc Goodman took the stage before a large audience, he noted that it was a unique honour to be introduced by South Africa’s ‘sexiest man’, Maps Maponyane, who was master of ceremonies for the evening. This was after Maponyane had read off Goodman’s long list of credentials, which include lecturer of politics, law and ethics at Singularity University in Silicon Valley, futurist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and advisor for NATO, the UN, the US government and various other law enforcement entities. His book, Future Crimes, is a New York Times bestseller.

Goodman began his presentation by saying, “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed,” a quote by William Gibson, the man who coined the term ‘cyberspace’. He qualified that by outlining how technology has been advancing at an exponential pace, far faster than legacy systems such as government, public policy and regulation. “We’re seeing this greater and greater gap in the world and I think that’s possibly why we’re seeing a lot of people feeling very uncomfortable about the way that world is going,” he said.

Criminals are also celebrating this rapid rise of technology, he explained, with crime now “digitised” and advancing exponentially too. Crimes can now be committed on a massive scale, such as the Yahoo breach, where over a billion accounts were hacked, and a handful of Siberian hackers who were able to steal 1.2 billion logon credentials and passwords.

“The threat is growing exponentially but unfortunately our defences are not. At Silicon Valley, we love to talk about innovation but often we forget that some of the best innovation out there is illegal,” he said, “Criminals are really good at innovation. Whatever the latest trend in technology is, criminals are already all over it.”

Goodman turned his attention to big data, speaking first on its value to society. However, something with such value becomes a sought-after commodity for criminals. Much of the data available to them is offered voluntarily, as Goodman illustrated through examples of Facebook users sharing revealing details on their profiles.

“You post the data out there and the world listens, it becomes known,” he said, “And we are all leaking data, and the more data you produce, the more criminals are happy to take advantage of and consume. We’re seeing lots of data leaks in the news these days and we need to be thinking about this, about how we use our data.” He added that there is more personal information online than most people realise.

He spoke about ransomware – malware that allows hackers to seize devices and data and hold it for ransom – and how criminals are using it to extort people for Bitcoins. A rapidly increasing number of systems, devices and even household appliances are now connected to the Internet of Things, which means that they are vulnerable. Hackers are able to seize control of a home’s thermostat, or TV, things that were once ‘dumb’ but are now ‘smart’.

“Today’s internet is metaphorically the size of a golf ball, and tomorrow’s is going to be the size of the sun. You think you live in such advanced technological times today because you have your smartphone and your Gameboy and your GPS. But we are just in the first seconds of the first minutes of the first hour of the internet revolution and frankly we have no idea what is coming next. So it’s a really exciting time to be alive … if you’re an optimist.”

This troubling picture illustrates the need for the public to become more security conscious and take more care to protect their data, even through simple means such as using a strong password and not using the same password across multiple accounts. He highlighted the need for a public education campaign around cybersecurity.

“It’s not all bad news, there are lots of opportunities. Every time a company gets hacked, cybersecurity stocks go up … We’re used to dealing with risks in business, currency risk, geopolitical risk, supply chain risk, it’s time to consider technology risk, and those companies that think about risk and measure it well will outpace their peers and will be the leaders of tomorrow.”

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