Google’s priorities: Security and mobility

The future of computing is mobile.

This statement has been repeated time and again by many people in the computer industry, and yesterday was Eric Schmidt’s turn to say it.

The Google CEO participated in a live interview conducted by Quentin Hardy, National Editor of Forbes Media, during the Atmosphere 2010 conference, and answered a myriad of questions concerning Chrome, the Chinese security threat, Google’s future, and others.

As Jason Kincaid reports, Schmidt stressed the importance of businesses giving a great deal of importance to creating mobile applications that will be interoperable and, above all, secure.

When asked about sharing security lessons that Google learned from the January attacks, Schmidt replied that they were faced with a moral question – to disclose or not to disclose the fact that they have been attacked and that tracking of human rights activists was conducted?

We all know what decision they made regarding that. They didn’t go into specifics of the attack, apart from confirming that a IE vulnerability was used as a gateway into the system.

Schmidt’s advice to everyone? “Make sure that you’re using the latest versions of operating systems and browsers.” He also stressed that all of them at Google believe that the web platforms they are building (Chrome, Chrome OS) will be fundamentally more secure.

He also acknowledged that the attacks have made the company more paranoid, and that they immediately began locking down their systems and updating all the internal software.