Chapter 13
Final Thoughts

Over the past twelve chapters, we have talked about your digital life, the threats against it, and some techniques for protecting it against today’s cyber threats. Modern IT is dizzyingly complex, with the average household containing dozens of times the computing power that put people on the moon two generations ago. With this technology, we can record and share our digital lives in ways never before possible, and access our lives’ data at a moment’s notice, all while on the go. It truly is remarkable what we can do. Some would argue that the digital revolution is just getting started, with the best yet to come.

Yet these capabilities come with risks attached to them. As authors and Hollywood have speculated, digital lives can be disrupted just as easily as they can be created, and cleaning up the mess of a hack or a compromise can be disruptive, time consuming, and disconcerting. This journey to a digital future is just beginning, and many security growing pains may remain before it is really secure and convenient, all at the same time.

In the future, cyberattacks may become much faster more devastating (and potentially deadlier), than they have been in the past. As more and more capabilities are network-connected—including infrastructure like cars, roads, electricity, and water—it may become possible for cyberattackers to disrupt more than just our e-mail or web browsing. A dangerous cat-and-mouse game is going to take place as engineers learn to leverage the capability of the network for new functions and functionalities, and attackers learn how to target those capabilities and functions for potential harm. An arms race between cyber innovators and cyberattackers is inevitable until some type of relatively safe “balance” is established. Until we achieve this “future digital nirvana,” we are stuck with the present reality of a patchwork of computers, phones, tablets, peripherals, smart devices, usernames, and passwords we have to manage and secure by hand. It isn’t pretty, but like so many things in life, it can be made to work well enough.

In this book, we have attempted to provide you with some tools and techniques you can use to secure your own digital life, as it exists today. While we know the technologies will continue to evolve at a breakneck pace, we hope the principles of good cybersecurity, and the techniques we are sharing with you for implementing these principles, will endure.