Brian Thomas

I’m not really sure where this post will end up going but it’s something that needs to come up a lot more.  How secure is our information?  Is information safer in the digital realm or the physical realm?

With the growth of cloud storage products, large amounts of information that should be kept extremely secure is being sent all over the world through data networks.  I use online banking, store credit card numbers online, store passwords online and locally on the computer.  In reality, the information is only as secure as the weakest password that needs to be cracked to access the information.  I put a lot of faith that in the hope that I can prevent security breaches.  The harsh truth is that even if I do the best to ensure security on my end there is still the possibility that security on the server end could be compromised.

When it comes to the physical world I have that same faith that I can keep things secure.  I have locks on my doors but that doesn’t protect everything.  It’s still possible to break a window and get in.

I think what it comes down to is using common sense and hoping for good luck.  I know that I’m not the most careful person with my information, I hope I don’t regret my choice.

From time to time I still pick up a freelance computer repair job.  I took a job fixing a MacBook Pro that turned into a multi-day endeavor.  It turned out the hard drive was failing (in my opinion).  The bigger problem I found was that a Mac OS X install DVD will not necessarily work on any Mac.  The OS X DVD came from another Mac user and was even for the same model (13″ MacBook Pro) and stock OS (10.6 Snow Leopard).  In my opinion the DVD should be able to install Snow Leopard on any Mac capable of running it.  It’s impractical to assume that people will hang on to their install media at all times.

I see this as Apple’s method to make sure people are stuck bringing their computers into the Apple store for repairs.