Posted by Cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it is one of the first organisations to address the challenge of human augmentation and bionic devices with a broad cybersecurity policy.
Cybersecurity Policy
This policy document aims to enhance the workforce while also considering employees’ security and welfare when using bionic devices in the office.
While there’s more use of bionic devices aiming to replace or augment parts of the human body with an artificial implant. There are legitimate fears and concerns among cybersecurity experts on the security aspect of bionic devices.
Bionic devices Market
The bionic devices market size is expected to be worth around $7.9 billion by 2027, according to the Global Market Insights latest report. The neural bionic devices market segment is expected to reach $5.32 billion by 2027.
They are concerned that too little attention is paid to the security of the dedicated devices. This lack of awareness around the topic leads to uncertainty and risks for both further development of human augmentation technologies, and a safer digital world in the future.
Security Challenges
Given this scenario, Kaspersky said it has been continuously exploring the potential of human augmentation and evaluating security challenges that humanity may encounter during its wider integration into people’s lives.
Following open discussions within the community, the company decided to respond to the specific need for security regulation and designed a cybersecurity policy to mitigate security risks that augmentation technology can pose to corporate IT networks.
The document creates a scenario where augmented employees become more common in the company in the future and takes into account Kaspersky’s real-life tests with employees’ biochip implants.
Bionic devices using procedures
Developed by Kaspersky security experts, the policy governs procedures for using bionic devices within the company and aims to reduce the associated cybersecurity risks in business processes.
The proposed document addresses the entire company’s infrastructure and all of its business units. As a result, it applies to the full access control system, as well as administrative processes, maintenance processes, and the use of automated systems.
The policy is to be applied to both employees and temporary staff, as well as employees of third-party stakeholders that render contract services to the company. All these factors aim to enhance the cybersecurity of the corporate infrastructure on a larger level.
Human Augmentation
Human augmentation is a burgeoning area of technology which in fact remains underexplored, according to Marco Preuss, Director – Kaspersky’s Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) in Europe.
“That’s why making a first step towards clarifying issues related to its use, as well as strengthening security, will help us to ensure its potential is used in a positive way. We believe that to build a safer digital world for tomorrow, we need to digitally secure the future of human augmentation today,” said Preuss.
Kaspersky’s cybersecurity policy offers a range of standardization processes, enhancing security and inclusion of employees with bionic devices in the office.
One of the major objectives of this initiative is also to engage the global IT and augmentation community in the discussion and pursue a collaborative effort for further steps of human augmentation security development.
This includes ensuring digital privacy of devices, proving different levels of access rights to stored information, and mitigating any threats related to human health.