Guadalajara, Mexico, Nov 14 (EFE).– The total protection of data is almost unattainable in the digital age, and at times we are unaware of how defenseless we really are, experts from a number of countries agreed here at the Outsource2LAC forum, organized by the Inter-American Development Bank, or IDB.

“Expectations of privacy are truly minimal,” partly because “people are disconnected from the realities that technology is introducing,” said Robert Wilkinson of the United States, who has 30 years’ experience with Citigroup in the field of information security.

Wilkinson took part in the debate “Security in the Global Digital Environment,” in which Enrique Cortes, director general of Luxoft Mexico, and the Ecuadorian Luis Loaiza, cofounder of Criptext, also took part.

Outsource2LAC is the principal forum on the subjects of outsourcing and offshoring in the region.

In Wilkinson’s opinion, “though the technology of ‘the Internet of things‘ (digital connection with everyday objects) is being used to create some very useful business tools, what people don’t understand are the implications of using them.”

“It will get harder and harder to hide – what a person accesses with whatever device, whether one realizes it or not, is stored somewhere forever,” he said.

As for the much discussed “right to be forgotten,” Wilkinson was very clear: “It’s incredibly difficult for anyone to eventually disappear.”

Enrique Cortes also warned of the lack of protection for data stored in the “cloud,” and added that there is also “the challenge of the new technologies of intelligent systems, massive data content poured out by everyone around the world and we don’t even know where.”

The young entrepreneur Luis Loaiza said that “the only thing a company can do is add layers of security over those already existing so it will be much harder for a hacker to penetrate the data.”

The debate, moderated by the director of Agencia EFE in Mexico, Raul Cortes, provided ample evidence that this is a problem from which no one can escape. EFE