Operational risk and cryptography

Patrick McConnell

Chapter 3 describes how the trend towards the increasing use of cryptography in financial services, and business in general, will impact operational risk management, creating an environment that is more complex, requiring new processes, technology and people skills to protect sensitive information. The chapter introduces the discipline of cryptography, and identifies some of the operational risks that arise from the use of modern cryptography, which are summarised in Chapter 4 and described in Part 4 of the book in more detail.

KEEPING SECRETS

People, businesses and nations need to be able to keep secrets! In pre-history, primitive groups needed to keep information about where scarce water and food could be found within the family or clan group, and they therefore developed tools, such as spear paintings,¹¹ See, for example, a description of a traditional Australian Aboriginal Water map: http://cryptoforest.blogspot.com/2011/08/aboriginal-water-map.html. It should be noted, however, that maps such as these are not strictly cryptographs (or writing) but “steganography” – hiding information in pictures (pictographs) or on physical objects. to communicate such secrets among their close