Security concerns call for industry-wide standards.

Common IT industry standards are increasingly likely as privacy and security concerns increase, says Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy in an exclusive interview with the British Computer Society (BCS).

In the wide-ranging interview, published in ITNOW, the monthly magazine for BCS members, McNealy says: "I think that [professionalism] is a valuable thing. It was a little hard to do in the old days when there were literally hundreds of different computer languages and interfaces and APIs and all the rest of it. With a lot more consolidation and standardisation I think you can start to look for certification. The area I would encourage the BCS to focus on is some common standards and understanding on the areas of privacy and security."

"People want to feel safe and comfortable that a technician is not going to compromise their privacy; that they are going to maintain the levels of security in the systems that they work on."

His vision of the future, he says, would ironically involve fewer computers, but more handsets and other devices, which were already helping bridge the digital divide, he believes.

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