Benefits Outweigh Risks for Juki Net

Takehiko AOYAGI (Professor, GLOCOM)

Many people seem to be opposed to Juki Net because of their concern about the insecurity of the system. While it may be reasonable to demand improvements for the Juki Net system by pointing out its insufficient security, it is completely a different matter if one is opposed to the system as a whole based on security concerns.

As a matter of fact, it is a mistake to say that the Juki Net system is "perfectly secure," but it may be a bigger mistake to say that "Juki Net should not be adopted because it is not perfectly secure," which is just like saying "money should not be printed because we cannot avoid counterfeiting completely." There are a number of things that we are actually using while trying to protect their misuse, such as credit cards, cash cards, bank deposit books and driver's licenses.

While it is understandable to want to hear those who are in charge of the security of Juki Net say that "it is perfectly secure" because that is the logic of security management, the basic premise for risk management is that "no human creation can ever be perfectly secure." That is to say, we always need to prepare for the reasonable and possible range of risks. It is a bit contradictory if we don't want to hear those who are in charge of security say that "no human creation could ever be perfectly secure."

The problem of network security may be a task that we will have to pursue forever in information society. There might be no ultimate solution to this problem because of a never-ending cycle of offense and defense. But we should continue trying to make use of our wisdom to confine such insecurity to a reasonable range of calculated risk.

If we cannot avoid a certain degree of risks, the questions will become (1) whether there are enough benefits to be pursued while bearing such risks, and (2) how much such risks can be reduced by ourselves. In my opinion, Juki Net offers enough benefits to offset the associated risks for all of us.

(The original Japanese article was posted at the GLOCOM Juki Net Research Forum: http://www.juki-net.jp/opinion/009/)