DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
  1. DZone
  2. Data Engineering
  3. Data
  4. Earth Day: Fighting Climate Change With Cybersecurity

Earth Day: Fighting Climate Change With Cybersecurity

It might sound strange, but environmentalism and cybersecurity go hand-in-hand. Read on to see how a DZone MVB bridges the gap between these two concerns.

Hakon Olsen user avatar by
Hakon Olsen
·
Apr. 25, 17 · Opinion
Like (1)
Save
Tweet
Share
2.79K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

One of the biggest challenges of our time is climate change. The world struggles to get our ongoing path to environmental destruction under control. Earth Day was this past weekend. This day is for most people about avoiding meat, taking public transport, using reusable shopping bags, drinking wine instead of beer, and turning lights off – but nerds can do more than that. Our biggest challenge is to reduce the climate gas emissions from transport.

trheimtorg

Walkable cities are nice – and cybersecurity can contribute to that! Happy Earth Day 2017! Information technology has a gigantic role to play in the solution to that problem:

  • Self-driving cars, buses, metros make public transport cheaper. But can they be hacked? Of course, they can.
  • Smart assistants using AI to help plan your day, your travel, and to optimize your choices also with regard to environmental footprint can do a lot. But can they be hacked, thereby destroying all hope of privacy protection? Sure they can.
  • Telework can reduce the need to travel to work, and the need for business travel to talk to people in other locations. This brings a whole swath of issues: privacy, reliability, etc. If people don’t trust the solutions for communication and system access, and if they don’t work reliably, people will keep boarding planes to meet clients and driving cars to go to the office.
  • Cloud services are nice. They make working together over distances a lot easier. Cloud services require data centers. If the reliability of a data center is not quite up to expectations, the standard solution is to replicate everything in another data center, or for the customer perhaps to replicate everything in his or her own data center, or possibly mirroring it to another cloud provider. This may not be seen as necessary if the reliability is super-good with the primary provider – particularly the ability to deal with DDoS attacks. Building reliable data centers is, therefore, part of the climate solution – in addition to providing data centers with green energy and efficient cooling systems.

OK, so DDoS is a climate problem? Yes, it is. And what do cybercriminals need to perform large-scale DDoS attacks? They need botnets. They get botnets by infecting IoT devices, laptops, phones, workstations and so on with malware. Endpoint security is, therefore, also, a climate issue. Following sensible security management is thus a contributor to protecting the environment. So in addition to choosing the bus over the car today, you can also help Mother Earth by beefing up the security on your private devices:

  • Make sure to patch everything, including routers, cell phones, laptops, smart home solutions, alarm systems, internet connected refrigerators - the whole lot.
  • Stop using cloud services with sketchy security and privacy practices. Force vendors to beef up their security by using your consumer power. And protect your own interests at the same time. This is doing everyone a favor – it makes AI assistants and such trustworthy, making more people use them, which favors optimized transport, consumption, and communications.
  • Prioritize efficient, safe, and secure telework. Use VPN when working from coffee shops, and promote the “local work global impact” way of doing things. Being able to avoid excessive travel, whether it is to the office or to a client on the other side of the globe, your decisions have an impact. Especially if you manage to influence other people to prioritize the same things.

Happy Earth Day 2017. Promote climate action through security practices!

Data (computing)

Published at DZone with permission of Hakon Olsen, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • How to Secure Your CI/CD Pipeline
  • 5 Factors When Selecting a Database
  • Bye-Bye, Regular Dev [Comic]
  • PHP vs React

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: