Cyber Security Needs Its Ralph Nader

By Tsion Gonen
 
It took thousands of unnecessary traffic fatalities to create an environment for radical transformation of the auto industry. What will it take for a similar change to occur in data security?
 By every metric, driving an automobile is far safer today than it was in 1965, due to a combination of factors including government regulations and legislation, consumer awareness, and technology advances. The catalyst for all of this was one man: Ralph Nader.
Prior to 1965, car manufacturers had no real motivation to make safe cars because the cost of doing so did not justify the business benefits. But then Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers. His advocacy injected the traffic fatality epidemic into the headlines, and a nation changed.
Congress unanimously passed the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and established the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Manufacturers responded by putting seatbelts, headrests, and other mandated equipment in their cars, and some started making safety a competitive differentiator. And consumers… well, they never really got the memo. Many (if not most) still didn’t use seatbelts, even though they knew the risks. It took subsequent legislation at the state level in the 1980s to enforce seatbelt use among drivers
 
 
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