Is the biggest cyber threat military or economic?
Discussion -
• • • • gAtO-tHiNk tAnK —: While we were developing stuxnet for Iran -warfare cyber weapon. The Chinese were robbing our intellectual properties and these actions are the reason the US is in the economic mess were in. Corporate espionage is treated differently but it translate to money and economic power. In the old days the CIA would have a country fight each other and when that happens you forget your real enemies. Us -vs-them. Look at Occupy Wall Street and the Tea party. Through cyber manipulation and buying technologies when you couldn’t hack them is the reason the BRIC nations are the new leaders in the world power base. So to answer your question the bigger cyber threat would be economics warfare. You just can’t justify sending in a nuclear missile because some government contractor is DDoS’ing your competition. Proportionality of attacks.
• • • • gAtO other sAy’S: —
gAtO lOcO mAyBe sI - nO
• Military and economy are married since ever; the biggest cyber threat comes from inside and hits both. MIC is a weak concept.
• We cannot have a military without an economy, we cannot protect our economy without our military.
Individual defence destroys the individual, collective defense protects the collective of individuals.
Businesses do not often see the value of information security until its far too late. they as a whole do not learn from others mistakes unless those mistakes were made by companies in their own space, and unfortunately these days many companies occupy more than one sector so it is easy to make excuses why ‘it wont happen to us’.
The economy is an asset and thus needs to be protected.
The military is an asset and thus needs to be protected.
The health service is an asset and thus needs to be protected.
<Insert asset> is an asset and needs to be protected.
Working together they can protect one anothers backs using collective resources, individually they can fall like dominos. Secure the backbone, pool the resources with the right talent in the right areas with strategists, technical support and physical support and you go a long way to ensuring in the event of a major crisis that you can protect the whole….
Thats my view anyway…… maybe ill include that in my book (more eloquently as I have only had one coffee this morning and am not firing on all thrusters).
• MG Shaw adds a new dimension to the term “Public Private Partnership” in positing that national security interests and the profit interests of firms are intertwined and mutually dependent. This is good to hear. Now…if we can just get more business convinced of this inter-connectedness, we’ll be able to move forward. Those of us in the field have much public education work to do. Stay strong.
• With the preponderance of intellectual capital residing with the private-sector, within this man-made cyber domain, its too bad the private& public-sectors can’t put more emphasis on the ‘how’ versus the ‘what’. Most responsible individuals/firms know ‘what’ the problems are…the intent with public/private-sector collaboration is to figure out ‘how’ to solve the challenges in manageable bites and stop trying to “boil the ocean”. As the new saying goes “better safe than SONY”!
• Riley makes a good point. It’s almost as if we’d rather talk about the problem rather than solve it. Sure, it’s expensive to put another layer of security into our IT architecture, but the technology to stop hackers exists and isn’t that hard to find. And if whining employees don’t like not being able to use Facebook on company computers, nicely tell them to find a new job. Remember the days of private lines and no Internet. We still connected computers on networks before the Internet. It was called private networking. This would solve most of the Internet related cybersecurity challenges.
• Riley and Dan,
I completely agree with you both. However, even our military is now clamoring for Social media access on Government networks. I do believe there is a use for Social media however not every mission requires such access; not to mention the preponderance of users simply want to be social butterflies while at work. As you state for those who require it, purchase a separate internet access and open it wide up. However for the mission critical or business critical efforts lock it down and properly secure it. Unfortunately that good old bottom line matters too much and leaders would rather assume risk than remove it. I would rather pay on the front side than on the backside.
• Seeing as it would take more gas than the Chinese have to mobilize , they have already been out hacking everything they can, I dont think it would be a military like war, economic seems more feesable.
• Most countries treat economic hacking as a less serious attack (with less serious penalties) than a military attack. Most businesses are less IA aware than the military. I would definitely say economic attacks are a bigger long-term cyber threat to nations today. However, if military cyber-security ever drops their guard, the consequences on their readiness and ability to respond will result in more fatalities.
• When we are talking about Cyberwar, we can not say that the economy or the military will be the preferred targets. The more logical target is as always the weakest link in a system.
War is always a military operation, whether or not cyber. Like the Chinese hacked all they could, Americans, Russians and Israelis did and still do.
The effect of new weapon systems, offensive and defensive concepts can only be tested to a certain degree in a virtual environment. At a certain point they have to be used under real operational conditions.
Cyberwar is a holistic war. In a cyberwar we do not have the distinction between “your network” or “their network”, the whole targeted country becomes one sole network. The network will be mapped, vulnerabilities identified and exploited.
The most vulnerable part of a network is always the User, followed by the public sector and the communication media. From there it spreads.
A cyberwar attack first uses the tactics of sabotage, deception and misdirection.
We are still far away from AMF’s on nuclear power plants and such things.
• The Chinese are fighting a long term war for domination. They are sucking up all the rare earth elements, stealing intellectual property through computer warfare, and are starting to get into the copper and hydrocarbon production. However, other countries are engaged in exactly the same thing. We are in a highly competitive environment, and those that don’t step up their game are going to be left in the dust of history.
• • • • gAtO oUt
