How harnessing Digital fault line will play key role in our technology future

1. 1
Cyrils,s Blog
Cyril’s Blog on Digital
Fault-Lines
April Publication Edition1

2. 2
Cyrils,s Blog
Life in the Era of Digital Fault-Lines
Introduction
The term fault lines quickly
brings to mind the geological phenom-
enon of the earth’s tectonic shift cre-
ated by the movement of the earth’s
tectonic plates to cause earth quakes.
Similar dynamics liken to the earth’s
tectonic shift has been discovered to
exist in our digital world albeit more
widespread than recognized, causing
almost unstoppable cracks that are
regarded as digital fault lines. These
fault lines impede the realization of
the full potential of digital and elec-
tronic connectivity anticipated by glo-
balization.
While earth quakes are be-
lieved to benefit the earth with the
even dispersal of uneven earth re-
sources and in the same vein destroy
lives and landscape, digital quakes
from digital fault lines can similarly
benefit us when leveraged or can be-
come destructive element when left
without due care. This is because
quakes in their nature hold vast op-
portunities and threats that can be
harnessed. Two of these fault lines
are characterized as Access fault line
and Trust fault line
Access Fault Line
Access Fault line is perceived
as a digital divide but argued to be
better coined as digital fault line
(Reich, J.,2013) due to the global un-
even access to digital information and
connectivity. Several efforts are been
mobilized using various approaches to
reduce global digital divide referred to
as “Access fault line” in this blog.
These efforts are geared to maximize
accessibility to digital technology and
electronic connectivity perceived to
boost global economic prosperity.
More than ever before, global
economic leadership are reaching
consensus with governments in
support of building technolgy based
infrastructures and inclusions to
manage challenges of the global digital
future.
According to Anderson, J. (2015) of
New York Times, a panel of technology
leaders in the World Economic forum
at Davos in January 2015 made a
personate plea to see the connectivity
of the next billion of the unconnected
4.3 Billion globally. The concern of
how to achieve the connectivity of a
next Billion or better still the world’s
7.3 Billion Population in the mist of
global disparities is a huge challenge
for these leaders.
Achieving this objective re-
quires a radical approach that can buy
in government support to institute in-
frastructures in view of boosting glob-
al digital and Internet usage from its
current 46.4% as reported by Mini-
watts Marketing Group (2001-2015).
While immense effort is on the way to
curb digital fault line, it is prudent to
tag knowledge as an integral factor
because its lack inhibits the ability to
fully leverage the benefits of digital
technologies in a more realistic way.

3. 3
Cyrils,s Blog
Digital Fault-Lines
Currently, a higher proportion
of access to Internet and digital con-
tent can be attributed to the mobile
platform; 3G/4G/GPRS, unlike broad-
band services that holds the key to
vast resources locked in digital con-
nectivity. While this can be seen as a
step in the right direction , we should
not forget that several challenges
marred connectivity through mobile
platforms. But the positive note is
that their contribution to achieve ac-
cess for all far outweighs provisions
made by broadband services. This is
encouraging in the drive to connect
the next Billion.
As we applaud mobile service
providers for their dexterity to pro-
vide digital access to the world, we
should not be ignorant that such ser-
vices remain commercially focused
with most times monetized value for
service outweighing the service lever-
aged by end users.
I recall about 3 years ago when I had
to purchase all the services provided
by mobile carries in my country to en-
sure my ability to publish a paper for
peer review but when the crucial time
reached, all of the carries could not
provide me the means to get connect-
ed. Such experiences remain common
in developing countries hence the
need for government driven infra-
structures to provide broadband ser-
vices for their people.
Furthermore, leaders should
be cognitive that access provided
through mobile platforms are mostly
application based that hardly unleash
the potential of Internet or electronic
connectivity not emphasizing the
magnitude of cyber attack footprint
inherent in their vendor locked plat-
forms. “The Internet is truly global
and every new user online benefits
other users, for social interaction,
economic opportunities and many
other benefits that were previously
unimaginable.” said Internet Society
President and CEO Kathy Brown.
Trust Fault Line
Trust in the realm of digital
connectivity is almost a fallacy. Let me
liken trust as confidence and using
trust in context, I trust icloud and
without a contract entrusted them
with my data. I trust that checking the
agree box in the end users
agreement will make them store my
data in the same way I should have
protected my data if I had the
capability to host it myself.
In the same vein, I will trust my email
with Google and hope they don’t
betray my trust. These are some of
the decisions we are faced with daily
and without a second thought
connect with everything that is
presented before us as digital users.
My hope is that as users, we must
make concious decisions when faced
with the decision to connect or not to
connect.

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Cyrils,s Blog
Digital Fault-Lines
Despite all odds and negative
media reports, be assured that
technology providers can not single
you out unnecessarily for abuse. Also
know as fact that there is no liability
or responsibility for providers
without an agreement and even
when one exist, it is almost assured it
legally favors the provider than the
subscriber. The question now is how
increasing trust will help the end
user?
Drawing parallels between trust and
assurance in relation to product
security, technology leaders and
regulators require logical data from
system builders to certify their
product against; either for
functionality or assurance or both
using systematic and well calibrated
test to certify the accuracy of data
provided in product manuals. This
allows regulators certify techies’
product against a security target for
products that attempt evaluation.
There are several of these evaluation
bodies but the most common are
TCSEC, ITSEC and Common Criteria.
Detail procedure of evaluation
processes is beyond the scope of this
blog.
It is also interesting to know that
certification by these bodies for
products is not mandatory hence a lot
of uncertified products out there not
evaluated by independent bodies
with their get out of jail card free
embedded in the end-user agreement
which is hardly read or understood by
users that often sign them. A radical
move to check this kind of product
development can utterly improve
trust and reduce the cracks in trust as
a fault line.
Much like access fault line,
trust fault line holds opportunities
and threats. Of recent, we have seen
tech companies using stronger
encryptions and using radical concept
like multi-factored authentication to
protect user privacy and multihomed
cloud services to complement
resource availability. More often, we
have seen service providers paying
indemnity to users for contract
breeches and utterly remorseful for
compromising users personal
identifiable Information (PII). We
have also seen legislators regulating
the kind of information providers are
allowed to collect with almost
complete authority for the use of
data at the discretion of the data
owner albeit in some part of the
world. We have also seen litigations
by users for unauthorized use and
abuse of their PII.
More than ever, we have
seen economic benefits from web 3.0
hosted sometimes for negligible
amount when compared to the
enormous economic value that they
derive. Similarly, booming of service
oriented architectures (SOA) like
cloud services did not only open
access to globalization but minimizes
business requirement for starters
using the pay as you grow model.
How to leverage these economic
benefit within the fault lines remain
the sole objective of this blog which I
will treat in subsequent blogs.