Simon Says – Musings of a Technology CTO

To encrypt, or not to encrypt: that is the question.

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of user nonacceptance,

Or to take arms against a sea of exploits,

And by opposing end them? To encrypt: to authenticate;

No more; and by authenticate to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That disclosure is heir to, ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To encrypt, to authenticate;

To audit: perchance to dream of security: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that effort of implementation what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal user apathy,

Must give us pause: there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of user communities,

The oppressor’s ID10T error, the proud man’s denial that caps-locks was on;

The pangs of despised credentials, the law’s delay,

The insolence of the CSIO’s office and the spurns of the auditors

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare server? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary implementation plan,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d lost data from whose bourn

No system administrator returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to vendors that we know not of?

Thus conscience and user feedback does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action. – Soft you now!

The fair McAfee! DLP, in thy orisons.

Be all my lost data sins remember’d.