Discussion: Time for new cyberscaping?

I have the unfortunate honor of serving as my neighborhood’s HOA president. (“Make our grass green again!”) As it turns out, one of my primary duties is to alert our management company whenever a common area sprinkler head has broken, consequently pouring water into the street.

Coming to a head

You see, we have an older neighborhood with an equally aging irrigation system. Now at the end of their life, the sprinkler heads are beginning to fail along with the brittle pipes feeding them. With every installation of a new head, there is an increase of pressure on the older sections. This increase in turn causes more breakages across the system requiring more repairs. Honestly, our community is frustrated, and we are looking into the expense of converting over to xeriscaping. By xeriscaping, I mean ditching the lush, green (resource-heavy) lawns and giant trees for more hardscaping and water-friendly plants. (We do live in Phoenix, after all!) But I tell you, it ain’t cheap and it ain’t easy convincing my neighbors to spend more money now for a possible return they may never experience.

Stopping the cyber flood

My point? Well, what if our current global Internet is like the neighborhood sprinkler system? What if all our cybersecurity woes — the data breaches, malware zero-days, ransomware attacks, account takeovers, all of it — like the broken sprinkler heads, are just the consequence of trying to keep an outdated, obsolete network usable and running? If that is so, maybe it is time we consider what the new, cyber version of xeriscaping might be and start exploring our options. What would that look like? Who takes the lead? Is it worth the investment? Can we afford to move on? Can we afford not to?