Four things I'll never forget from MWC 2016

It feels like just yesterday, I was standing in the crowded show floor at Mobile World Congress shuttling back and forth between sales meetings, customer dinners, panel sessions and media interviews. But it’s all over now and there was so much that I saw, heard and experienced at the conference that’s earned itself a reputation for being the "Oscars of the Mobile Industry".

Amidst all of it, there were four things that I’ll never forget from this year’s event.

A GigaBit society is coming, or at least Vodafone hopes so

European mobile network operator Vodafone has a belief that Europe should aim for a GigaBit society: one where businesses benefit from widespread connectivity of 1 Gigabit per second by 2030 -- delivered by robust, reliable and future-proof mobile technologies. And, that’s exactly what Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao said on the main stage at MWC. Why? To quote Colao: "Technology has the power to redefine enterprises by driving efficiency, productivity, agility, scalability and new business models". And these are benefits every business should feel good about.

To make his point, Colao went on to cite statistics from its recent "Flexible Friend or Foe?" study, which found that 75 percent of the companies surveyed have introduced flexible work environments. And of those, 61 percent saw higher profits and 83 percent saw higher productivity as a result.

Connected cars were here, there and everywhere

According to the GSMA, there could be as many as 44 million autonomous and connected cars on public streets and highways by 2030. That might explain why I couldn’t seem to escape a sighting of connected cars at every turn in the massive MWC venue. There was the minivan parked inside the Fujitsu booth that was wrapped with branded materials and read -- "On the Road to a Hyperconnected World" -- on the window.

And then there was the ultra-sleek Mercedes F 015 that looked more like a shiny silver bullet that would fly out of a gun than a car. And once again, there were those words I kept seeing and hearing at MWC all week next to the car -- connected and autonomous. What a long way we’ve come from when cars were just tools for getting from one place to another. Now they’re so much more -- they connect all of the digital information and content we consume on a daily basis to our car so that the 'driving experience' makes our lives better and more productive.

But in the push to get drivers excited about the autonomy of connected cars, I didn’t see anything written or mentioned anywhere as to what happens to all of that digital information that syncs to the car once the driver no longer needs the car anymore. Where does it go? How does it get purged? How could you guarantee no one could hack into it and breach it?

5G was like the Hollywood starlet that has all the hype, but still hasn’t proven herself

Given the number of times I heard 5G come up in keynote and panel sessions, you’d think it was already here. And you’d think it has proven itself to do all kinds of wondrous things. But it’s not here. And it hasn’t proven itself yet. It’s more of a concept right now for the next generation of wireless networks that will reach speeds at least ten times faster than LTE, with near-instant latency in some cases.

Concept or not, the top executives from some of the world’s biggest mobile network operators and device manufacturers -- AT&T, Ericsson and Intel -- all purported that 5G will become a reality at some point between 2018 and 2020. As AT&T Mobile and Business Solutions CEO Ralph de la Vega explained, "We have to be careful about overhyping 5G. And if we want to deploy 5G effectively, regulatory investments need to be made to support that".

Security has some catching up to do with technology

For someone like me, it’s hard to remember a moment when I didn’t think about or wasn’t hypersensitive to security weaknesses and issues. But that’s because it’s my job and it’s what I help companies do for themselves. But as I sat in the panel session titled "Network Security" on the third day of MWC, it was clear that as much as security has shifted from being "important" to "critical" for businesses today, there’s also no silver bullet that can fix everything.

This was especially true when Will Chow from Mobolize asked everyone in the room to raise their hand if they had heard of 'Stage Fright'. The results of this poll were a bit unfortunate -- barely a handful of arms rose in the air. Stage Fright, as Chow explained, is a malware that can quickly infect a device in the background and doesn’t even require the MMS to be opened to infect the device. Why should this matter? Chow wanted to drill home the stark reality that most devices are vulnerable for long periods of time (if not forever) and can take several years for vulnerabilities to be patched. He went on to tell the audience that what they think is the cause of vulnerabilities often isn’t actually it. He cited factors such as unsolicited MMS messages, hacked emails, accounts, nearby devices pushing malware (via Wi-Fi), Wi-Fi snooping, DNS hijacking and other factors.

I liked that he was so direct and unapologetic in how he explained this. It was intended to shine the light on major misconceptions that exist and that put users’ privacy at risk because, as he put it, "we need security applications that can empower users to protect themselves, as opposed to relying on operating systems and carriers to do it for them".

A few minutes later, fellow panelist Dave Palmer from DarkTrace talked about this golden age of hacking that we’ve now entered. In it, Palmer reiterated a sad fact over and over again -- that once an attacker gets inside, they can stay undetected for long periods of time (even as many as 100 days). And so he made a call to arms about how businesses need to strengthen their immune systems to detect what gets in and get rid of it. Essentially, Palmer said, "We need machines that fight back -- interrupting anomalies and interrupting attacks without disrupting our day-to-day business".

Photo credit: peresanz/Shutterstock

Pat Clawson is Chief Executive Officer Blancco Technology Group. He has more than 20 years of experience in technology and IT security. Most recently, he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lumension Security, Inc., where he successfully grew the business to strong revenue growth and profitability. In addition to successfully launching new technologies into the marketplace and guiding four businesses through acquisitions, Clawson has also established himself as an IT security pundit within the media. His insights have been featured in many of the world’s most influential news publications, including WSJ, CNN, CNET, Washington Post, USA Today, Forbes, CIO and Infosecurity Magazine, just to name a few.