God Mode Driver

Responsibility grows hand in hand with trust. In technical operations, the metrics of responsibility are access rights. The metrics of trust will be the same universally; information security does have a greater emphasis on information confidentiality, integrity and availability. When trust reaches an apex, technical operators are given the responsibility of superuser. It is an account that is not limited to trivial tasks of system maintenance. It is a responsibility of omnipotent access. This is the superuser mode aka God mode. 

 

Experience in changing car oil, jump starting a vehicle and changing a flat tire would be top priorities for first time drivers. Before the privilege of adventurous road trips, drivers should know these basic principles. Privilege is granted to the amount of responsibility handled. Else, detrimental consequences.

Technical operators abide by this principle as well. They remain Tier One until they show effort towards responsible. In time, privilege can be granted. Their marks will be in trustworthiness and competence. As adventurous road trips mark the apex of faithful driver, so the superuser privilege to a faithful technical operator.

The apex is not the end of the adventure. There is a place for maintenance. Oil needs to be changed or a car break. The superuser needs to continue growing in their responsibilities and trust or rights may be revoked. Achievements are good only for only as long as it lasts. Trust and responsibility is an ever growing characteristic in daily life but also in data confidentiality, integrity and availability.

Not so trivial encryption

At the bright age of fourteen I was luentfay taay igPay atinLay (fluent at Pig Latin). It was a lot of fun and trivial practicing it with class mates at that. Sometimes it was probably better that we spoke in Pig Latin so that the teacher couldn't understand it. Unless, of course, the teacher knew how to speak it as well.

I'm not real sure how Pig Latin originated but it's a basic idea. The encipher mechanism is to take the first letter of the first word (P from Pig), place it as the last letter of the word (igP), then add ay to finish the word (igPay). Once you understand the cipher you can encipher or cipher, code or decode, intelligible words to un-intelligible words for those that don't have the cipher. This is the basic idea of encryption.

Encryption is a way to translate electronic information to un-intelligible data, except for those who have the cipher (key in encryption jargon). With this key you can keep the information locked from those who shouldn't have access to it, and conversely unlocked to those who need access to it. 

There aren't a lot of sensitive things I needed to encrypt as a child. But as a professional, any kinds of company data could become malicious in the wrong hands. Thus keeping it safe by encryption is significantly important. Quality grade school teachers are no longer preoccupied about your business. Professionally, there are bigger things at stake and access to information becomes less trivial.