Brian Kernighan Quotes

What we're trying to do at Yahoo is build our products so they're safe and trustworthy, not just secure.

Data leaks are impossible to reverse, so the best strategy is to prevent intruders from having prolonged, unfettered access to the systems in the first place.

Efforts to constrain encryption through forms of extraordinary access will inevitably introduce vulnerabilities into the security of consumer products in ways that are likely to have adverse long-term effects on the security, privacy, and civil liberties of citizens.

For many years, even as users became more sophisticated, personal computers took too much effort to use without problem-solving, keeping alive the yearning for greater simplicity. Microsoft's dominant Windows platform, in particular, was a home for all manner of bugs and problems that required IT people to straighten out.

People appreciate a good product, a stable system. They want to communicate easily and use a product that just works.

No one will use the new Internet if it's slow, costs money and doesn't scale.

Computer security can simply be protecting your equipment and files from disgruntled employees, spies, and anything that goes bump in the night, but there is much more. Computer security helps ensure that your computers, networks, and peripherals work as expected all the time, and that your data is safe in the event of hard disk crash or a power failure resulting from an electrical storm. Computer security also makes sure no damage is done to your data and that no one is able to read it unless you want them to.

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers - organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative - if we don't solve these security problems, then people will hold back.

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control.

When designers replaced the command line interface with the graphical user interface, billions of people who are not programmers could make use of computer technology.

I have a cell phone that doesn't behave like a phone: It behaves like a computer that makes calls. Computers are becoming an integral part of daily life. And if people don't start designing them to be more user-friendly, then an even larger part of the population is going to be left out of even more stuff.

One of the problems with computers, particularly for the older people, is they were befuddled by them, and the computers have gotten better. They have gotten easier to use. They have gotten less expensive. The software interfaces have made things a lot more accessible.

Dropbox sweats the user experience details as commendably as it masters the considerable engineering challenges required to reliably sync files everywhere a user may need them.

Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people.

Businesses and users are going to use technology only if they can trust it.

We demand privacy, yet we glorify those that break into computers.

Everyone is a proponent of strong encryption.

Computers have become more friendly, understandable, and lots of years and thought have been put into developing software to convince people that they want and need a computer.

If you don't treat [computer and Internet] security like a religious fanatic, you are going to be hurt like you can't imagine.

As more of our medical records are stored electronically, the threats to our privacy will increase.

The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards -- and even then I have my doubts.

There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files.

We can find no successful terrorist attack that would have been prevented by the availability of a lawful decryption access technology ...

The spread of strong consumer encryption technology around the globe is inevitable;

In circumstances involving dramatic technological change, the best solution to privacy concerns may be legislative. A legislative body is well situated to gauge changing public attitudes, to draw detailed lines, and to balance privacy and public safety in a comprehensive way.