It's hard not to be concerned about the growing number of cyberattacks that seemingly can bring the largest companies to their knees.
It should be unnerving to understand that every physical movement, click on a keyboard and tap on a mobile phone creates data about us that is captured, sliced, diced, sold and resold again and again. Apart from access to vast knowledge at the speed of light, technology is accompanied by something else that is very dangerous.
My long-time friend, Thomas P. Vartanian, has captured this tension in his new book, "The Unhackable Internet: How Rebuilding Cyberspace Can Create Real Security and Prevent Financial Collapse."
It's fast-moving and well written, and it's an important contribution to our understanding of the technological world in which we live, authored by someone who has lived in both the financial and technology worlds advising financial institutions for five decades. As more of our financial lives benefit from a migration to the digital realm, all too often we ignore the threats to our privacy, wealth and national security that are being created. As Vartanian explains, the financial services business leads the way in working to create as safe an internet as is possible.
But the overall picture is still bleak. From cyberattacks by foreign adversaries, the implosion of cryptocurrency and other threats such as ransomware, online phishing, surveillance apps, spying software and logic bombs, "The Unhackable Internet" shows us how the next financial panic could nevertheless be delivered to us through the use and abuse of technology.
Vartanian describes how we could remake an internet which was never conceived as a secure environment. He suggests an online universe that mimics his first experiences as a bank regulator in the 1970s when the financial services industry relied on secure private networks.
He uses that model as a jumping off point to recreate cyberspace to be at least as secure as our analog lives, authenticating all digital traffic to a real person and removing any virtual traveler that violates the rules.
Importantly, he poses a challenge to America to take the lead and create a global coalition of democratic nations to implement financial cyber strategies as a counterweight to those who would weaponize technology. He makes it clear that nothing less than the control of global economies is at stake.
"The Unhackable Internet" is part history book and part problem solver. Describing cyberspace as a "mysterious, interconnected spaghetti bowl of instant digital gratification littered with secret entrances and mysterious backdoors," it guides the reader through 60 years of digital connectivity.
True Digital, which helps financial institutions zero in on vendors, says midsize banks have a unique need for its product.
It includes virtual fads, cryptocurrencies and increasing vulnerabilities that have ballooned the costs of cybersecurity to unsustainable levels. It analyzes the presidential, congressional, governmental and international statements and reports issued about financial cybersecurity between 1996 and 2022.
Important documents are referenced in the book's appendix, which by itself makes this an important book to own. Vartanian draws the reader to the conclusion that the government has been repeating the same warnings and making the same recommendations with very little progress being made.
Vartanian also discusses the issues with cryptocurrencies given his keen eye for evaluating risk and how it should be regulated. "The Unhackable Internet," which went to press before FTX's demise, predicted that the crypto industry would fall back to earth and his predictions and analysis have proven to be on point. But Vartanian takes the analysis a step further, arguing to policymakers that it should not "take a digital Pearl Harbor" to convince democracies around the world to create a more secure internet.
Vartanian refuses to allow the reader to leave full of questions, and the final chapters of the book focus on solutions. He runs through an exhaustive list of options, including the use of private and offline network infrastructures; better oversight of the ownership of internet infrastructure; and the imposition of enhanced authentication and governance with enforcement by real cyber police. Vartanian's online universe would eliminate anonymity and remove any virtual traveler that violated the new rules of the road. In effect, he would do what we do in our analog lives — lock our doors, protect our shores and make sure we have the best police and armies to protect us.
Perhaps most intriguing is his recommendation that we create a novel new form of collegial oversight of the internet where the public and private sectors share the responsibility for its security. His analysis of how decentralized technologies demand decentralized forms of regulation is Vartanian doing what he does best — seeing into a future where everything important has been moved to the internet.
Why hasn't anyone presented these arguments before? Why hasn't anyone asked if we built the wrong internet? "The Unhackable Internet" tries to tackle this.
First and foremost, the inconvenience and cost of fixing the internet makes it objectionable to just about everyone. Secondly, he suggests that legislators have ignored the dangers because of their misunderstanding of technology and/or the influence of political donations. Thirdly, regulators have been slow to act to avoid being labeled as tech luddites who suffocate innovation. Finally, he concludes that an exploding industry of cybersecurity experts hardly has an incentive to fix the internet when revenues from its defects are expected to reach $500 billion over the next several years.
Vartanian's bet is that most everyone would want to create a more secure internet if they knew that their wealth and private lives might disappear tomorrow. He explains that it has happened throughout the world in different ways at different times — without a doubt, a financial Pearl Harbor is always possible.
