Cryptography at the core of sound IT security
Whitfield Diffie, chief security officer at Sun Microsystems Inc., likes to dole out his first tenet of IT security — one no one should forget. “Whenever you have a secret, you have a vulnerability.” The tenet, given during the keynote at the Infosecurity Canada conference in Toronto last week, points to one of cryptography’s — and IT security’s, for that matter — basic pillars: if you have something you want to control, you have a problem. Diffie, who is best known for his discovery of public key cryptography more than a quarter century ago, spoke via satellite to a packed room of IT experts, all of whom are trying to come to grips with their growing difficulties controlling corporate information. Full Story