Welcome to On the Wire

The Internet is useful for a lot of things—watching videos of dogs dancing to Toto, ordering drone-delivered ice cream—but it has become less-than-useful at the task that it was originally designed for: organizing information and connecting people to that information. The sheer volume of data, opinions, and speculation available on any given topic makes it damn near impossible to find the stuff that really matters.
That’s especially true when the topic is security and fraud.
As technology has evolved over the last couple of decades and become easier to use, it also has become more attractive to both legitimate users and attackers. The phones we carry today are more powerful than many of the supercomputers of the 1980s—and far simpler to use. Fraudsters and cyber criminals have made the Internet their own and their relentless targeting of both consumers and enterprises has created a need for information to help educate people about the threats they face and how to protect themselves.
With the launch of On the Wire, we aim to provide that information in a simple, easy to understand way that hopefully will give readers the right kind of data and tools they need to understand the threat environment they face. We will cover a variety of topics, including fraud, social engineering, security, identity, and privacy, and our goal is to do it in a way that entertains as well as informs.
There will be a variety of voices and contributors on the site, with diverse viewpoints and backgrounds, who will bring a spectrum of opinions to the discussion. Our hope is that our readers will join in, too. Please do.
Welcome to On the Wire. Enjoy.
Image from Flickr stream of Nigel Howe.