Human augmentation is seen by many as one of the next great tech frontiers.

Strides have been made in areas like bionic limbs, artificial organs and sensory devices. With this however, comes the legitimate concern around the safety of these burgeoning devices.

Not only from a cybersecurity perspective, but other shortcomings when it comes to brave new technological worlds – for example, how will deregulated data protection work with devices like this that produce vast amounts of biometric data?

On this, Kaspersky says that a major objective of this initiative is to engage the global IT and augmentation community in the discussion and pursue a collaborative effort for further steps of human augmentation security development – including ensuring digital privacy of devices, proving different levels of access rights to stored information, and mitigating any threats related to human health.

However, the stark lack of awareness – and certainly regulation and protection for users of the emergent tech – leads to uncertainty and risks for both further development of human augmentation technologies, and a safer digital world in the future.

Following discussions within the community, Kapersky decided to respond to the specific need for security regulation and designed cybersecurity policy to mitigate security risks that augmentation technology can pose to corporate IT networks.

The document that informs the new policy creates a scenario where augmented employees become more common in the company in the future, and takes into account Kaspersky’s real-life tests with employees’ biochip implants.

Kapersky’s policy governs procedures for using bionic devices within the company – making them one of the first in the world to do so in an official capacity.

The policy aims to reduce the associated cybersecurity risks with bionic technology in an umbrella sense with how it could interact with the company’s business processes.

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The proposed document addresses the entire company’s infrastructure and all of its business units. As a result, it applies to the full access control system, as well as administration processes, maintenance processes, and the use of automated systems.

Seemingly more than a PR exercise, the policy is to be applied to both employees and temporary staff, as well as employees of third-party stakeholders that render contract services to the company.

All these factors aim to enhance the cybersecurity of the corporate infrastructure on a larger level in what is no doubt a bid to future-proof the companies cybersecurity outlooks when it comes to emergent technology like bionics.

Speaking about the new policy, Marco Preuss, Director of Kaspersky’s Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) in Europe, said: “Human augmentation is a burgeoning area of technology which in fact remains underexplored.

“That’s why making a first step towards clarifying issues related to its use, as well as strengthening security, will help us to ensure its potential is used in a positive way. We believe that to build a safer digital world for tomorrow, we need to digitally secure the future of human augmentation today.”

The cybersecurity policy initiated by Kaspersky offers a range of standardisation processes, such as enhancing security and granting better inclusion of employees using bionic devices when in the office.

The move by Kaspersky to introduce policy comes ahead of the next international discussion on the future of human augmentation, global industry policy, digital security standards, major digital threats that can affect augmented devices, as well as best practices to address them, by way of the UN organised Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2021 on December 7, 2021.

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