Digital Money, The Book

David Stelzl’s Latest Book

It’s been a busy summer. Some traveling, lots of work, and lots of writing. It’s all in preparation for the fall. Most of my fall will be spent in front of business leaders talking about security. Central to these presentations is my new book, Digital Money. I have conferences booked with CPA associations, banker’s associations, distributor conferences, and several exclusive executive lunch meetings hosted by resellers and technology manufactures. It’s all in an effort to create awareness – getting business leaders involved in their data security programs.

What is Digital Money?

You’ve heard of fintech and cybercurrencies – these are all related. But the data itself if worth a lot of money too…it’s all digital money. From bitcoin and blockchain to intellectual capital and trade secrets. Even your personal data – actually, that’s where it all starts.

I’ve been furiously writing since the start of the summer – the Digitalization Megatrend affectively changes everything we know about security, other than the fact that companies all around us are failing to keep their data secure. We should all know that. It’s in the paper every day.

The book should be out next month (August 2016)! I have my editors and internal team reviewing it now, and the artwork is in motion! What is this book about? Here are a few teasers…

Don’t like the word, Profiling? – Making decisions about someone based on what they look like is nothing compared to the data aggregation effort going on in the Net – Did you know that everything you do, including driving newer cars, is being recorded digitally? Everything from cookie syncing to fingerprint canvasing, all designed to understand everything there is to understand about you. You are absolutely being profiled.

Data aggregators know far more than your spouse will ever know about you. They know what you believe, how you think, what moves you, what convinces you, and how to get the most out of your bank account. What’s worse, they will sell that information – and some of it is extremely private.

They know about your health, your morals, your politics, your fears, your finances, and how to manipulate you. If you’re wondering who you will vote for in November, there’s a computer out there that probably already knows…and the Russians just hacked the Democratic National Convention computers to get some of that intel. (Note: the GOP systems were hacked not long ago). Will there be voter fraud this year? Yes – you can count on it. No doubt the winner will be determined by hackers…

Social engineering is bigger than ever. If Mitnik had the kind of data available on individuals today, his hacking efforts would he netted millions more.

Data is Essentially Digital money – A Look at Business Security

Social Media is growing because of data aggregation. Facebook is worth about 75 Billion simply because of the intelligence they have on you. The more social media grows, the more promiscuous end-users become with data that used to be secret. And the more data that get’s aggregated, the more hackers can convince users to open doors.

In this book I take a hard look at the trends – what hackers are up to, how the latest technology trends are opening doors, and how big data and deep machine learning are eating away at companies that don’t take the right steps.

This is not an IT book – it’s not technical. It’s about data, business, and leadership. If businesses are going to be secure, the leaders must lead. The alternative is to delegate it to the government, letting them impose millions of expensive, ineffective regulations that will ultimately cost small businesses to the point of bankruptcy.

It’s time to get serious about security.