John Karony: Shielding ourselves from increasing cyber threats
Hi everyone. With recent data breaches, hacks and legislative change all in the news recently, I wanted to touch on this topic today.
As hacks and exploits become increasingly complex, users like yourself must naturally wonder whether an uncompromisable data security system exists.
Cybersecurity has become a global challenge. Just earlier this month, the US unveiled its new National Cybersecurity Strategy while the European Parliament agreed on new common cybersecurity standards across all EU institutions. This comes at a time when risk experts have classed cyber-crime and cyber insecurity as the 8th biggest risk in terms of severity of impact, both short and long term.
I don’t know about you, but I certainly think (unfortunately), that it will continue climbing up this list.
As CEO of SafeMoon, my mission is to contribute to the digital ecosystem, making it safe and reliable for users. That is why, together with our team of security experts, we decided to develop Orbital Shield.
Some of you may already know about Orbital Shield, but for those who don’t, I will briefly summarize what it is here. Before I do, however, it’s important to stress a large part of our thinking that went into developing the software.
We’ve all been on websites and entered personal information, from credit card numbers to our personal addresses. And let’s be honest. How many of us actually read that pesky cookie information on sites? This is important though, as it highlights how companies are incentivized to collect and store our personal data for reasons ranging from marketing to targeted advertising.
Ever wondered why ads are offering you supposed deals to a particular destination you just Googled? It’s all because our personal data is collected and stored with the applications we use. Data storage is itself an industry worth over $200 billion and forecast by some estimates to triple in valuation by 2030.
Our mistake is assuming our data is stored in a secure way when in reality, it isn’t. With cyber attacks increasing, our data is exposed to foul actors. Let me be clear — I’m not saying we can stop things from being hacked. Anything is hackable. What I am saying is that we can live in a world where data is uncompromisable.
Crypto, although decentralized by its very nature, is still not completely secure. That’s why we continue to see large-scale crypto cyber attacks that steal millions from customers. Traditional crypto wallets for instance, are susceptible to cyber attacks as the data stored within them is not anonymized or encrypted in a secure manner. Cybercriminals, if they have the key to the vault, can open it, see who the assets belong to and take it for themselves.
Orbital Shield is an advanced security product that takes data — emails, usernames, passwords — and algorithmically anonymizes it. Once anonymized, the data is then encrypted. By encrypting the anonymized data, the system is only ever going to store a code and not user data in its natural form.
This type of robust cybersecurity which ensures that user information is secure, even if your system is breached, should be industry standard.
In our age of cyber threats and technological innovation, developers simply must continue to build superior software products with uncompromisable security systems.
Products like Orbital Shield will revolutionize the web 3 space for the better and I am looking forward to witnessing this.
Stay safe out there, folks. The internet and the world of web 3 is a great place, but it will always be full of risks. Our job is to help make it a safer place for all.
John Karony, CEO of SafeMoon
