Auto Sentry

When was the last time you were in an urban setting when some enterprising youth offered, "Hey, buddy, watch your car for you?" Consider the march of progress. Soon, according to this article, your car and its parking lot mates will be watching themselves.

Cars watching each other

What happens when you automate security this way? Invariably, there are vulnerabilities to address along with the perceived benefits. One hurdle is likely to be the perceived or actual capacity that such a protective cordon would give to anyone interested in tracking the vehicle -- and its owner. What about liability? In our litigious society, it might be very likely that if your car is supposed to be linking to others and sending out a distress signal through its parking lot peers, someone somewhere who loses a car to theft will look to sue a car owner who failed to maintain his car's alert system properly, thereby contributing to the loss event. Nuisance alarms will also be a likely barrier to user acceptance. Surely, rejection is ample in this world without having to face a cabal of cars apparently conspiring against a driver by sounding the alarm and failing to recognize him.

The ramifications are endless, at least for the beta site. Yet this technology may well offer promise in a world where neighborhood watches and looking out for each other seem out of fashion.

- Nick Catrantzos

Whom Do You Trust?

Any security professional with scar tissue from working in a hierarchy soon learns to view overseers of any kind with at least one part suspicion for every two parts of esteem. Corporate investigators reserve some of their best war stories for tales of abuses by people who are supposed to performing a watchdog function, and no business unit is exempt from the archives: audit, human resources, information technology, and security practitioners themselves. All have the propensity to stray.

Here, just recently, is an article from ABC News that ultimately traces to PC World.

IT snooping on e-mail

The source is important because it represents an industry tattling on itself. Next time you wonder who might be snooping on your e-mail, consider: Do you really want to ask IT for the answer?

- Nick Catrantzos