F E AT U R E
TAKE ME TO CUBA by Stuart Corner
OF CUBA, CARS … AND CYBERSECURITY
screening of passengers or anyone before you got on
Are you old enough, and fortunate enough, to have
“And you could take whatever you wanted in your
experienced air travel in the 1960s and 1970s? It was,
hand luggage. In 1976 my mother actually packed
Kendra Ross told the AusCERT2021 conference, “The
her vegetable knives because she said those in
golden age of flying … a glorious time, for those who
the motels were too blunt. Security was all about
the flight,” Ross said.
could afford it.” What’s this got to do with cybersecurity? In a presentation titled Take Me To Cuba, Ross and her co-presenter, Mike Seddon, drew parallels between cybersecurity and the history of airline security, along with parallels between cybersecurity and vehicle, building and worker safety.
“In the 1950s the Ford Motor company made available an upgrade called the Lifeguard Package. It included lap belts in the front seat, a padded dashboard and safety glass. It didn’t sell well, customers didn’t demand it.”
Their most important conclusion was that, in many industries, effective regulation is rarely pre-emptive and comes only after a major event or when safety failures reach epidemic levels; and that we are on verge of one, or possibly both, of
protecting you on the ground from pickpockets, and from thieves.”
these in cybersecurity.
Air travel security changed for ever after 9/11 but in
In the halcyon early days of airline travel, security was
up, in the US at least, after hijacking became an
non-existent. “You could just rock on up and grab a ticket before your flight because there was no pre-
the eighties and nineties was progressively ramped almost daily occurrence, perpetrated by people
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