Revolutions and Evolutions in High Technology

As was mentioned in previous paragraphs, one cannot address the issue of information protection without first addressing the changes brought on by high technology, and its impact on businesses, government agencies, societies, global, economic competition, and the world in general. High technology obviously has a major impact on information and information systems protection (InfoSec) and the ISSO's ability to successfully protect information.

High technology has many uses, and over the centuries it has driven how we humans work, live, and interact. In a speech televised on the program BookTV on April 4, 2002, Michael Eisner, Chairman and CEO, The Walt Disney Company, discussed the impact of technology on the world and used the following timeline of the beginnings of communications related "devices":

• 1455: Gutenberg Bible

• 1689: Newspapers

• 1741: Magazines

• 1892: Movies

• 1907: Radio broadcast

• 1927: TV

• 1975: Microsoft

All these forms of technology and communication systems, as well as companies, have had a major impact on our lives throughout history. They not only entertain us, but also provide us with information. Some of the information provided is sensitive information that a company or government agency may want to keep private and not release to the general public. Consider this as an ISSO: If that private, sensitive information communicated to the public is about your company, how that information is obtained may indicate a vulnerability in an information protection process. If so, you have a serious problem. The more free a society is, the more free the news media will be, and consequently, the more challenging your job to protect sensitive business information. However, with that said, remember that as an ISSO, your job is also to protect the privacy of individuals in your company.

Some day, on the corporate balance sheet, there will be an entry which reads "Information"; for in most cases the information is more valuable than the hardware which processes it.—RADM Grace Murray Hopper, United States Navy

We've been using the terms technology and high technology, but what exactly do these two terms mean? In general, technology is described as a means to handle a technical problem. It can be a method, process, or thing. When we talk about high technology, what do we mean? Many definitions of high technology are vague and often interpreted and thought of based on the environment of the person defining it. Those of us in the world of the 21st-century ISSO think of high technology as basically computer-based systems. For our purposes, we will define technology and high technology as those things that are microprocessor based.