That proves my point again that there are not enough regulations on electronic security standards that applies to private companies.
All you have are white hat security consultant experts that only have their dollars and reputation to work with. The public is highly vulnerable on those things yet I don't see politicians really caring.
And not the first government run entity in SA to have funds stolen from it.
Transnet/PRASA (railways)
Eskom (electricity)
SAA (airline)
All have had just totally monumental theft often at the top levels. It all seems to be pretty consequence free. Meanwhile, the hawks open immediate investigations and charge people almost immediately who are trying to expose things - which is kind of funny - 10 years to investigate totally obvious theft, 7 days to charge folks who are exposing it :)!
South Africa has insane levels of graft and corruption that have been going on for decades. They also have a lot of politically motivated assassinations. Total basket case of a country.
Not really a total basket case. They had a long and fantastic history actually of institution building, including credible tax services etc.
It was really the Zuma years that messed things up and the new folks don't seem interested in any cleanup (the ANC has had a lock on power a long time). They are still a great country relatively speaking in Africa, with incredible potential.
As a US expat living in Joburg, I agree that there is a lot of corruption in SA. But damn if 2020 hasn't shown a spotlight on the shady business in the US as well.
> These prizes seem to be worth killing for. Since 2014 more than 115 Glebelands residents have been murdered. Many were anc members who objected to the ways of Robert Mzobe, an anc councillor accused of corruption, and Bongani Hlope, a local warlord who terrorised residents. “Glebelands is a microcosm,” argues Mary de Haas, a researcher into local violence. Throughout the country violence is regularly meted out by one faction of the anc against another. From 2000 to 2017 nearly 300 political assassinations have been recorded, many of them anc members.
Quite the opposite: the free market will deal with this just fine, giving a big penalty to companies that don't care enough. The government, on the other hand, imposes bad businesses, enables regulatory capture and has proven many times that it has no idea how to handle infosec. These white hat consultants aren't perfect but through competition they're still better than lobbied lawmakers.
The FDA made it mandatory for food manufacturers to list their ingredients on food they sell. Prior to these laws no food manufacturer was willing to do this freely, for fear of someone else stealing their recipe. But now consumers can make informed decisions and avoid foods that will give them severe, life threatening allergic reactions.
Every citizen who drives a motor vehicle must be issued a driver's licence by the state they reside in. This enables a minimum understanding of how a complex machine (the highway transportation system) works so that other drivers / participants of that system can use it safely. Without regulation, vehicle collisions would be rampant and the system would be far less stable.
Not all government regulation and oversight is bad.
I highly recommend reading the book "Click here to kill everybody" by Bruce Schneier [1]. Bruce has been in the cyber-security world for a long time now and is considered one of the world's foremost experts on cryptography and computer security. In this book he makes projections about the "internet of things (internet+)" and the security problems that will come with it. He strongly advocates for government oversight and legal reform in multiple areas.
> The FDA made it mandatory for food manufacturers to list their ingredients on food they sell
FDA still allows companies to hide ingredients under the guise of "natural flavors" and "artificial flavors". I hope you aren't allergic to one of those!
> Every citizen who drives a motor vehicle must be issued a driver's licence by the state they reside in. This enables a minimum understanding of how a complex machine (the highway transportation system) works so that other drivers / participants of that system can use it safely.
Free markets don't exist outside of textbooks and can't due to the complexities of social relations we have to deal with in the real world. It seems like you're suggesting a solution that can't ever work by merit of it being unable to exist.
Or perhaps to acknowledge that the assumptions about a free-market ignore the realities of human psychology, and thus a free-market inherently cannot exist because humans are not capable of producing a free market without regulation, and regulation is antithetical to a truly free market?
The idea is not that the free market will always produce perfect results and perfect goods. The idea is that the free market will produce better results at a faster pace with less unintended consequences than government intervention.
Government intervention rarely happens proactively, just as major market changes rarely happen proactively. Supplier failure on a large scale makes it apparent that change is necessary, and only then do changes follow, either from the top down by government intervention, or from the bottom up by the market.
All you have are white hat security consultant experts that only have their dollars and reputation to work with. The public is highly vulnerable on those things yet I don't see politicians really caring.