The second webinar in this week’s Security SOS series is in the bag!
In episode #2, Sophos VP of Product Management John Shaw took on the question, “Can you strengthen security by weakening it?”
As John quipped privately before the recording, “This really ought to be a really quick interview where all I have to say is ‘No.'”
Yet there is a lot of pressure on security vendors these days over what are known as backdoors.
Security backdoors are holes that you put into technology products so that you can deliberately sidestep security when it suits you.
That’s a huge relief (and possibly a very handy career sweetener!) when it’s your CEOs’s laptop and she’s forgotten the password just before a vital meeting.
And it probably feels like a morally valid choice when it’s a mass-murderer’s mobile phone and breaking into it might just recover important information about other conspirators in the crime.
But backdoor tricks cut both ways, especially when the crooks figure them out for themselves.
Just like yesterday’s webinar, this episode was warmly received by our audience, and inspired some provocative questions at the end.
You can catch up on the Backdoors webinar by listening online now. (Your email address will be requested.)
If you enjoy it, why not register for one or more of our remaining webinars?
The remaining topics are: the problems of malicious online ads, the cybercriminal’s toolkit, and the security pitfalls of the Internet of Things.
The next webinar, on malvertising, is this afternoon at 2pm UK time. (15:00 CET, 10:00 EDT.)
The SOS webinars are essentially live podcasts followed by questions from the audience. Unlike traditional webinars with 30-45 minutes of Powerpoint slides delivered in the style of a conference presentation, we’re running them rather like a half-hour science discussion show on BBC Radio 4 in the UK, or on NPR in the US. Once you’ve joined the webinar, you only need to listen, so you can put the webinar window into the background. In other words, it’s quick and easy to join in.
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