The landscape of critical business assets has changed significantly since the first electronic access cards were introduced about 50 years ago. Personal computers and networking did not exist – let alone the Internet, mobile phones, digital pocket cameras, USB drives and gigabit capacity memory chips smaller than a flattened pea. Typewriters themselves held no or little data – you could only read some recently typed text from a then-modern plastic typewriter ribbon cartridge.
Today, electronic computing devices (whose non-electronic predecessors were formerly known as “business machines”) are both physical assets to be protected, and generators of information assets that require safeguarding.
Source: Ray Bernard, PSP, CHS-III and Sal D’Agostino, CSCIP