How we got here... - What I am reading 3/8/2016

The Hedgehog Review - Temps, Consultants, and the Rise of the Precarious Economy -

The collapse of this postwar economy came from the overreach of its new corporate form—the conglomerate—whose rise was legitimated by the belief in managerial planning. But its essential moral underpinnings—stability for investment and, especially, stability for work—took more of an effort to dislodge. Yet in the 1970s and 1980s, this effort succeeded as corporations began to embrace risk and markets, undoing the stability of the postwar period. By the 1980s, the risk-taking entrepreneur had displaced the safe company man as the ideal employee.

Today, scholars and critics are all abuzz about “precarious” work. Instead of a job for life with General Motors or AT&T, we now have many jobs either in sequence or, increasingly, all at once. Freelancers in the US labor force are estimated to number around fifty-four million, as much as one-third of the work force.6 “Precarious” has become a catchall term that encompasses everything from day labor to temp work to the gig economy, and denotes flexible work that is insecure, temporary, and generally poorly paid. If the worker in this flexible economy is something new, so too is the firm, which, instead of hiring employees, increasingly outsources its labor needs.  

The article is dense but interesting, examining the rise of outsourcing and leading into the rise of the "gig economy".  I read it last night  / early this morning and I know I didn't get everything in it so I will need to read it again.

Dark Reading - Why Marrying Infosec & Info Governance Boosts Security Capabilities -

When I say data-centric security, I’m not really talking about the traditional role of Data Loss Prevention (DLP), which in the past has attempted to block commandeering of sensitive data. History teaches us that the perimeter is no match for today’s cybercriminals. Hackers shouldn’t be holding our crown jewels with only perimeter technologies standing between them and victory. Data-centric security begins far earlier and involves knowing where our sensitive data is supposed to be, versus where it is now.

In general this makes snese to me, but such a plan will break a few rice bowls (and seriously impact the "cool" factor associated with some jobs) so look for some resistance.

IEEE Spectrum - Quantum Computer Comes Closer to Cracking RSA Encryption -

Now computer scientists at MIT and the University of Innsbruck say they've assembled the first five quantum bits (qubits) of a quantum computer that could someday factor any number, and thereby crack the security of traditional encryption schemes.

...

Chuang and his collaborators found that the five-atom quantum computer successfully calculated the factors of 15. Previously, experts thought such a calculation would require at least 12 qubits to complete. Chuang says the five-ion model can be scaled up to factor much bigger numbers as long as the ion trap can hold its qubits in place. The team published its results in this week’s issue of Science.

I was trying to make the point this weekend to someone on This Week in Tech and in their chat room that this type of research is moving fast, and that encryption as it currently exists will not be the security panacea that many people believe it is.