• "Today’s systems must anticipate future attacks. Any comprehensive system – whether for authenticated communications, secure data storage, or electronic commerce – is likely to remain in use for five years or more. It must be able to withstand the future: smarter attackers, more computational power, and greater incentives to subvert a widespread system. There won’t be time to upgrade it in the field."

    Bruce Schneier, "Why Cryptography Is Harder Than It Looks", 1997
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  • “Briefly and simply, assurance work makes a user or a creditor more confident that the system works as intended without flaws, without surprises, even in the presence of malice.” … “The major shortfall is absence of assurance or safety mechanisms in software.  If my car crashed as often as my computer does, I’d be dead by now.”

    Brian Snow, Former Technical Director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), "We need Assurance", AusCERT 2008

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  • “The rapidly evolving field of quantum computers is one of the most active research areas of modern science, attracting substantial funding that supports research groups at internationally leading academic institutions, national laboratories, and major industrial-research centers.”

    ARDA, Report of the Quantum Information Science and Technology Experts Panel, 2004

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Home Resources Expert Opinions Information assurance quote: Brian SNOW, Consider the use of smart cards
quote: Brian SNOW, Consider the use of smart cards

Consider the use of smart cards, smart badges, or other hardware tokens for especially critical functions.  Although more costly than software, when properly implemented the assurance gain is great.  The form-factor is not as important as the existence of an isolated processor and address space for assured operations – an ‘Island of Security,’ if you will.  Such devices can communicate with each other through secure protocols and provide a web of security connecting secure nodes located across a sea of insecurity in the global net.

Brian Snow, Former Technical Director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), "We need assurance!", 1999-2008
 

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