Delphi Internet Founder Compares Information Security Technology to Bloodletting

BOSTON - July 21, 2014 - PRLog -- It used to be that every practicing physician knew how much blood to drain at what stage of all common ailments - until research demonstrated that bloodletting is useless and even harmful.

Now Wes Kussmaul claims that information security technology is as useless as bloodletting.

In his book entitled Don't Get Norteled, Kussmaul notes that almost all information security technology depends upon the ability to determine the intentions and character of the sender of a stream of bits.

"That's impossible" says Kussmaul, "except in the case of an amateur attacker who lacks skills and funding. And those are not the attackers you need to worry about."

The title, Don't Get Norteled, refers to the fate of the officers of Nortel Networks, a ten billion dollar maker of network equipment that went bankrupt in 2009. After the company's demise it was learned that the usernames and passwords of Nortel's top eleven officers had been compromised for years by hackers apparently operating from the company's competitors in China.

The subtitle of the book is "Authenticity works where security technology has failed us."  "Authenticity with a capital A is the condition that exists when all significant events are digitally signed by user-owned universal credentials" notes the author.

Written for CEOs, COOs and CFOs rather than technologists, Don't Get Norteled, 464 pages, ISBN 978-1-931248-05-1 published by PKI Press, is available from http://pkipress.com/book/dgn.html in July 2014.

As the founder of Delphi Internet Services Corporation, which was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News America Corp., Wes Kussmaul has been involved with the online world since 1981.

PKI Press was established in 2001 to serve readers interested in issues of identity, authentication, privacy, and online community. If you're interested in the future of the Internet, browse our online catalog to find indispensable books for both technical and non-technical audiences.