The Bad News of Data Breaches
The news keeps pouring in day after day and week after week of significant company-damaging data breaches. No wonder; Only 23% of companies surveyed in a recent poll indicated that data encryption was even a priority. We should not be having, reading about and reacting to most of these. Such events are typically quite preventable. The JVM platform has some of the strongest and simplest support for encryption of any programming language. An easy to use Java API for encryption, as well as several high level open source libraries, are at developers’ beck and call. I’ve embarked on a mission this year to educate as many developers as possible about the basic vocabulary of encryption, the history of how these algorithms and techniques came about, and how to effectively implement the right use of encryption for business applications.
The Solution in the form of Education
I first brought this topic of Encryption on the JVM to user groups in my home town of Denver, Colorado, USA. It received a more than warm welcome and deep after-talk discussions. Next, I took this topic on the road with the No Fluff Just Stuff symposium series in the USA. Next, I’m excited to get to share these same concepts with audiences in Sweden at the always-cutting-edge Øredev conference, shortly followed by the equally esteemed Devoxx in Belgium.
Acting on the Need for Encryption
Discard the notion that encryption is too hard to learn. Embrace that encryption is quickly becoming a necessary skill of sought-after developers, the world over. This talk will get you up to speed and send you on your way to making your applications more secure, leverage encryption properly, and protect your valuable customer data from prying eyes. No longer just a notable stretch goal, this is the new responsible level of application engineering. I hope to see you at one of these exciting events!
