Chairman of Sun speaks out in favour of industry wide security standards

By Isabelle Chaize

Scott McNealy, current chairman of Sun Microsystems and one of its founding members, has criticized the lack of industry wide initiatives dealing with security and called for a more professional approach to tackling IT security problems.

In an interview with the British Computer Society’s member magazine, which will be published next week, he said that businesses needed to think carefully about the issue of security, suggesting that a more standards-based approach was necessary.

McNealy argued that better training and certification, which would be made possible by a common set of standards across the industry, would help manage the growing It security problem.

He said ‘People want to feel safe and comfortable that a technician is not going to compromise their privacy; that they are going to maintain the levels of security in the systems that they work on.’

‘I think that [professionalism] is a valuable thing. It was a little hard to do in the old days when there were literally hundreds of different computer languages and interfaces and APIs and all the rest of it. With a lot more consolidation and standardisation I think you can start to look for certification.’

The interview comes in the wake of the recent series of losses of data by both private organisations and Government departments.

Also discussed during the interview were McNealy’s views on the internet and the publishing sector. He claimed that, due to the rise in user-created content, the media industry was having to adapt quicker than any other industry.