The security industry found its dream enemy in 2013 -- and new technical challenges too

IDG News Service - 2013 was the year we learned we must encrypt our data if we don't want the likes of the U.S. National Security Agency or the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters reading it as it crosses the Internet.

The security industry has the enemy it always dreamed of to help it make the case for encryption adoption, but users looking to secure their data and communications need to be wary of claims made in marketing messages. Securing data in motion is the priority, experts say, and some large Internet firms are already making progress in this area, but encrypting data at rest without losing its usefulness will prove a greater challenge.

"The NSA's surveillance has opened the eyes of many people around the world," Lamar Bailey, director of security research and development at security firm Tripwire said via email. "Security professionals have always known that this style of surveillance is possible with the right resources, but this episode has been a big wake-up call for everyone. Many countries and companies outside the U.S. are now taking a harder, more in-depth look at software and hardware that comes from the U.S., although the silver lining is that mainstream users are now more concerned with encrypting data and reviewing how their information is being shared."

The public debate sparked by the surveillance revelations in recent months has prompted some encouraging responses already: Google has encrypted the links between its data centers; Yahoo is working to do the same and has promised to enable SSL encryption by default for webmail and other services, and Twitter has enabled an SSL feature called forward secrecy, already implemented by Google and Facebook, which makes mass decryption of SSL traffic hard even if the website operator's master private key is compromised.

Some software vendors started developing alternatives to existing communication technologies, with the goal of providing end-to-end encryption and making upstream data interception harder. Secure communications provider Silent Circle launched an effort called the Dark Mail Alliance to develop a private a secure email protocol that encrypts metadata, not just message contents; Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde is working with others on a secure crowd-funded mobile messaging application called Hemlis with distributed infrastructure hosted in privacy-friendly jurisdictions, and BitTorrent, the company behind the popular file-sharing protocol of the same name, is developing a peer-to-peer instant messaging application that encrypts messages directly between users and doesn't rely on central servers.

These and other examples send a clear message: securing the data transport channels to prevent unwanted upstream interception is a priority. The Internet Engineering Task Force, an organization that develops Internet standards, is already working toward this goal. Together with other Internet infrastructure groups, IETF expressed concern that the reported mass monitoring and surveillance by government agencies undermines the trust and confidence of Internet users globally.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

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Science Podcast - Grand Challenges in Science Education (19 April 2013)

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Wisconsin's health-care fight illustrates challenges as states change leadership

MADISON, WIS. - Two weeks after President Obama signed the nation's health-care overhaul into law, then-Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) issued an executive order creating an Office of Health Care Reform.

Over the next eight months, the Badger State made more headway than virtually anywhere else in the country at preparing to carry the statute out. It designed - and presented at the White House - the country's only prototype for how people and small businesses could navigate a new health insurance marketplace online. It produced a 205-page blueprint envisioning that marketplace as a "transformative force," steering people toward care of high quality and low cost.

Then, in late January, Doyle's Republican successor, Scott Walker, issued his own executive order, dissolving the health reform office and replacing it with the Office of Free Market Health Care.

"We view this as a fundamentally different approach than what the past [Wisconsin] administration was doing - and what . . . the Obama administration is pushing," Walker said in the first interview he has given about health-care reform since assuming office.

Wisconsin's U-turn, as sharp as anywhere in the country, illustrates how the views of state leaders are shaping the way the health-care overhaul envisioned by Congress will work on the ground. It illustrates, too, the treacherous terrain the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are walking by entrusting states to carry out major parts of the plan now that 29 governors are Republicans, including 18 who - like Walker - have taken office this winter. In Wisconsin, as in five other states, both chambers of the legislature also have just switched to GOP control.

"We've gone from one kind of boldness to another," said Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin and a leading liberal activist on health care in this university town with its granite-domed state Capitol.

But being dead set against the health law is not proving to be a simple matter of saying no to everything it contains. The new opposition is subtler but no less profound - a process of picking and choosing provisions to embrace or reject, of taking some grants offered by the federal government while spurning others, of striving to kill the law in Congress or the courts while preparing a conservative alternative.

Walker, best known for his effort to demolish rights to collective bargaining for government employees, thinks that the health-care statute is unconstitutional and that the government has no business influencing people's health-care choices. Doyle's aides estimated that the law would save Wisconsin $850 million by the end of the decade; Walker's estimate that it would cost $433 million.

Where Wisconsin is coming from

With states required by 2014 to carry out the law's core features - among them, widening access to private and public insurance - Wisconsin is in a more auspicious starting place than most. Just 6 percent of its residents lack health coverage, the second-lowest proportion in the country. And over the years, Wisconsin repeatedly has expanded Medicaid, called BadgerCare here, so that an unusually large share of people already has public insurance.

Those distinctions are part of the Walker administration's justification for resisting federal requirements. "Wisconsin . . . already has accomplished much of what [the law] aspires to do," said Dennis G. Smith, the new secretary of the state's Department of Health Services.

Smith, the driving force behind Wisconsin's about-face, arrived from Washington in January with a reputation as a mild-mannered, highly conservative thinker on health policy. Under President George W. Bush, he was in charge of Medicaid at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. More recently, he was at the Heritage Foundation, writing criticisms of the new federal law. He said in an interview that he did not have ties to Wisconsin or know Walker before mutual acquaintances, including Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, suggested to both men that they should talk.

In a primary example of obeying the law selectively, Walker and Smith said they will create, as the statute envisions, one or more marketplaces called exchanges to help individuals and small businesses buy insurance. But the exchanges will not do everything the law says. "We believe it's got to be free-market driven, not government driven," Walker said.

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New materials offer solutions to energy production challenges

New materials will have a central role in many of the energy applications of the future. For instance, inexpensive and environmentally friendly thermoelectric materials will be capable of converting waste heat into electricity in both homes and factories in the future.

Nearly all of the new inorganic materials being developed at the Aalto University School of Chemical Technology involve energy - its production, transfer, or storage - in one way or another. New superconductors, as well as materials used in lithium ion batteries, solid oxide fuel cells, and oxygen storage, among other things, are being developed at the laboratory of Academy Professor Maarit Karppinen.

Other interesting projects are the thermoelectric materials being developed at the laboratory, which are capable of extracting electrical energy from waste heat originating from various sources. In future visions these materials will be producing energy in places such as the walls of homes, solar panels, car exhaust pipes and the heat exchangers of power plants. They can also be used as sources of electricity in mobile devices or in cardiac pacemakers, for instance.

'Thermoelectric materials can be used in both small consumer applications as well as large industrial institutions in the production of electricity from waste heat', Karppinen says.

Common to all of the materials developed in the laboratory is that they are based on oxides, which do not damage the environment. Also, they contain inexpensive and easily-available materials, such as zinc, titanium, and iron, instead of costly precious metals.

Hard work and pure coincidence

Karppinen's laboratory engages in pioneering basic research in which the goal is the development of completely new materials. The application point of view is always in the background, but it is not necessarily the primary consideration.

'We try to find compounds and entire families of materials that nobody else in the world has managed to produce yet', she says.

She says that in addition to persistent research , coincidence has had an important role in the work.

'A new material that has been developed into a superconductor has sometimes proven to be a good thermoelectric material, and vice versa. A new kind of cobalt oxide which was supposed to be a promising thermoelectric material proved to be uniquely suitable for the storage of oxygen.'

This is possible because the materials being researched are typically mixed oxide materials which can be used for a number of different applications. 'The materials that I have studied have remained similar over the years, but the variety of their applications has kept growing', Karppinen says.

She studied oxide superconductors already for her doctoral dissertation, which was completed in 1993. After that, she went to Japan, to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where she spent a total of ten years. In the last five years of this period she served as an assistant professor.

'We continue to cooperate closely. Japan is one of the main players in the development of oxide materials.'

An open-minded approach produces results

The application of different methods of synthesis is a key part of the practical work of a laboratory.

'To find something completely new, it is necessary to have the courage to experiment with production methods that nobody else has ever tried before', Karppinen explains.

For instance, her laboratory has produced oxide materials under ultra-high pressure - in the same kinds of conditions that turn graphite into diamonds. Another important method is atomic layer deposition, or ALD, in which materials are produced as thin films, one atom at a time.

'Some materials will only become stable when they are made in thin film form', she says.

Half of the approximately 20 researchers in Karppinen's laboratory produce materials in the form of thin films, and the other half produce them as powders. Researchers have also used ALD technology to produce new types of hybrid materials combining organic and inorganic layers of atoms.

However, it will be a long time before the materials will have commercial applications.

'Closest to it are thermoelectric materials. They have a very wide range of potential applications', she observes.

Karppinen's role model is Professor John Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin. At the age of 90, he is still continuing his long career as one of the most important researchers in his field. In the late 1970s he and his small research group developed a lithium ion battery which was taken into commercial production by Sony in 1991.

Karppinen says that this is typical of the time frame from the discovery of a new functional material to its commercialisation.

'Significant discoveries do not necessarily emerge in big laboratories alone. We also have possibilities for practically anything', she says.

Provided by Aalto University

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