Hello, all. Apocalyptic post.
We have somehow got used to living surrounded by dozens of digital services: online assistants like Alice, cloud storage, recommendation services, online shopping and much more. Life is easy and convenient (we are persistently convinced of this) and absolutely safe (we are constantly deceived about this).
I have decided not to dwell on global issues, and today's post is dedicated to the narrow topic of telecom services. What is wrong with them?
At a first glance, everything is great: online messengers and VCS-services allow saving a lot on infrastructure: there is no need to buy expensive (and now scarce) servers, buy out the full cost of software licenses. Moreover, the responsibility for security and business continuity also lies with the service providers, so there is no need to pay your administrator to maintain the server and repair it after an attack. Let's face it, small companies or ordinary people simply don't have the ability to support their own telecommunication means.
BUT!
Even the ancients proved that putting eggs in one basket is such a solution.
In terms of security, a SaaS service is just a mountain of eggs (personal data). Attacking 2-3 popular services, even if they are perfectly protected, is much easier than trying to break into millions of distributed storages, each of which contains only one person's login and password. Those data leaks we keep hearing about:
OZON, Yandex, Sber are a little alarming to us. Immediately there are assurances from companies that "security measures have been increased, employees have been punished, and in general the data was outdated" (yep-ha-ha).
