For me personally, I believe the biggest cybersecurity challenge in 2040 will be ensuring that data continuously collected by our smartphones, social media, and the internet in general is kept anonymized and safe. With more and more companies jumping on the data collection/aggregation bandwagon, it seems inevitable that the collection and selling of user data will be one of the biggest businesses in the cyber world. As the business grows, so will the need for servers to store the data collected, servers need to be secured in order to defend themselves against all manner of cyber-attacks.

            My hope is that national and supranational policy makers would release standardized guidelines and requirements that must be met in order to collect user data. The parties in question must first prove that 1) the data will be kept anonymous and untraceable, 2) the data will be secured with an easy-to-update security system that uses the highest level of encryption possible in the consumer market, and 3) that the data won’t be sold to unverified sources. Laws must also be put in place to force web browser developers and website developers to implement measures that prevent unwanted data collection and/or avoid it altogether.

            This would be a massive undertaking though, and companies like Alphabet, Facebook, and Twitter would most likely lobby against such regulation, as data aggregation are some of their most profitable ventures. In order to overcome them, politicians on both sides and from around the world must come together to push to keep our data safe, though this may go against their own interests as well. Many of these politicians are paid by these companies so that they turn a blind eye. That leaves it to us, the voters, to vote for politicians that take hard stances against malicious and unsafe tracking, diagnostic data collection, and other malpractices.