Protecting the Cheddar is an important case study on the problems that can occur from an over-networked company. This story reminded me closely of a company my friends worked for that encountered a similar issue. They were building a queer dating app and had the best of intentions in the process. However, they were storing a lot of personal information about each user (ie their sexuality, dating history, dating preferences, etc.) Their app got hacked, and many sensitive information about their users became public. This led to the downfall of their company, and since they were an early-stage startup, they never recovered.
Some of this information should never have access to the internet. However, some of it is necessary to “match” people to others they might want to date. In the case that sensitive information is required, they should encrypt the information so that hackers can’t see all the private user information just from the first glance.
Thinking further about other companies/products that could risk public safety if they were managed by over-networked systems, crypto companies come first to mind. Currently, many companies store people’s token assets on protocols that have the potential to be hacked. While security is the main factor in all of their protocol design, this is dealing with really high-stakes data. A hack could mean someone loses the entire contents of their wallet.
Overall, companies need to think very critically about how and what user information they are storing.
