Defending The Kingdom

Bruce Schneier, an author and security expert, commented a few days ago on an article on Yahoo News that is pertinent for readers of this blog. The article stated that a group of European businessmen and researchers is attempting to develop software that will enable ground crews to take over the controls of an airplane should hijackers attempt to use the plane as a weapon.

The article reports that:

The system would be designed in such a way that even a computer hacker on board could not get round it.

Obviously, there is a potential problem with this. What if the hijackers use this system to override the controls of the plane and proceed to use it for their purposes without boarding the plane in the first place?

This illustrates a point about security in general: security is not simply a technological issue and it certainly is not something that can be solved by clever software and then confidently discarded from thought. Security requires careful planning and differing reactions depending on the circumstances. Don’t take security for granted once you’ve downloaded a couple of programs. That’s a start, but it’s not sufficient.