Earnest Engineer

To maintain secure computer systems, in the past the basics have been tasks like keep systems updated, run anti-virus software, use a properly configured firewall,use a filtering proxy for access to the internet. The advice on basics has been mechanistic in the past - make the machinery protect itself was the ideal and most hoped-for outcome. The new Basics include the old things and add: Establish a Security Culture Maintain Good Computer Habits  Plan for the Unexpected Control Access to Protected Health Information (from  Top 10 Tips for Cybersecurity in Health Care ) What's interesting about the new Basics is the additional items all have something in common: People. Each item focuses on how people interact with the systems, what they should expect and look for in terms of benefits, risks and dangers, and the fact the use of computers and computerized machinery must always remember the human elements for mistake, misuse and out-right abuse. Why Is Cybersecurit

Doing some security reading, I came across a post from Bruce Schneier about voting and technology. It is part of a continuing thread in his blog and is quite timely. Securing Elections . As a software engineer, I agree with Schneier and I think that working on secure, distributed, open and widely implemented voting registration system and tabulation systems would be interesting - both technically and socially. I have up-close experience (as a candidate in small city) with the tabulation process and I was surprised by the apparent lack of tools to expedite, verify, validate and secure the process. This piqued my curiosity further, to no particular end. Given that, I started searching the web for open voter registration and I found the Voting Technology Toolkit . An online sample of voter registration can be found at Trust the Vote demo project (Virginia) . or even better at Rock the Vote . Another system is Civitas , a NSF funded project from Cornell which is interesting for it