Personal IT and security in 2019

In an opening presentation to the ISSE conference in Scheveningen Professor Norbert Pohlmann, Chairman of TeleTrusT Germany, attempted to predict the extent to which IT will be part of our daily lives in ten years time.

Already each person may rely on as many as 70 CPUs every day - not just in computers, phones and PDAs, but also in microwaves, televisions, cars and lifts. In ten years time this number is likely to have increased to hundreds or even thousands. Since we will not be able to interact individually with each of these, we are likely to depend on devices communicating directly with each other (mostly by short-range wireless technologies) and using artificial intelligence to identify those situations when a decision from a human is required. Of course each of these communications and intelligences must be protected from interference either by malice or accident, so new security models and measures are likely to be required.

Artificial intelligence may also help us deal more efficiently with existing technologies. For example our e-mail (it seems that e-mail overload will still be with us in ten years!) might be pre-read by an intelligent software assistant that deletes or files some mails, replies automatically to others, drafts replies to others for us to approve, and prioritises those that need a human-drafted response. At this point another new security model is required to prevent your software assistant and mine responding to each other at such a rate that they overload the office network!

Andrew Cormack - ISSE conference in Scheveningen, Netherlands, 6-8 October 2009
(http://www.isse.eu.com/)