Bell Labs announced today that it had solved the field of information security, a field it invented last year.

"Here at Bell Labs, we design the largest machine on the planet - the Bell System Telephone Network. We take that seriously", Matthew Fields, an applied scientist at the Lab told the Times in an interview last month. "We have to make sure that system continues to operate efficiently, and with the level of quality our shareholders and customers expect. We've invented information security to discuss the efforts we've taken to that end."

The new field, described in a Bell System Technical Journal article last year, focuses on protecting the system from disruption from outside actors, either malicious or misguided. Given the large scale of the network, the Journal article identifies several potential points of failure, including "communist infiltrators", "anti-Bell sentiment", and "impacts to the network from the second coming."

Progress in the field was made in last month's Technical Journal, which proudly proclaimed a solution to the field. "We just don't let people touch the wires", Mr. Fields explained. "Turns out it's just that easy. If you can't touch the wires you can't impact the network. Solved that one pretty easily."

Mr. Fields promptly left the room before the Times was able to ask any followup questions. When we attempted to ask about the fact that every call goes over those wires, allowing customers some ability to "touch" the wires, Bell Labs responded with a cease and desist.

Republished from the January 1950 edition of the Times.