Introducing Flash Stories, published as news happens. Short, sweet, and to the point. Brought to you by Alchemer’s Editorial Team.
“Given that for most individuals and many companies, data breaches are more a matter of when than if, this is certainly pushing things in the right direction. Vendors of customer data should be encrypting by default, so customers shouldn’t have to think about it,” says Darren Weiner, Director of IT at Alchemer.
Today’s Story:
- Headlines across the board bring us the latest story unfolding at IBM. The company has taken a firm stance on fighting the hacker frenzy (see the U.S. Presidential Election, Target’s Data Breach, and Verizon’s recent data mishap) by building mega powerful mainframe computers that enable every business, “banks to retailers to travel-booking companies” to encrypt — or encode — customer data at scale.
- This new tech is being dubbed IBM Z with a $500,000 price tag
- The technology behind this is IBM computer chips that are installed in mainframe services where massive amounts of confidential, bank and other sensitive information is housed.
- IBM’s current mainframe processes run 6 billion transactions per day across the globe (think booking a hotel, making an online payment, or renting a car) — those interactions go through this mega powerful server.
- Encrypting this means our information is safer and more difficult for data hungry hackers to access.
Could this be the first big round of the fight against cyber terrorism? Tell us what you think.
“There are only two types of companies, it is commonly said: those that have been hacked, and those that just don’t know it yet,” says Brian Fung of The Washington Post.