Sunil Bhargava: Cyber attacks are typically silent, stealth in nature and don’t command the attention of the general public. President Obama’s announced cyberspace policy didn’t get the attention it deserved – given that cyber attacks have the potential to close down critical infrastructure – effectively closing down the markets, strategic defenses, disease control infrastructure or the core communications networks. So why isn’t the cyberspace policy getting the attention it may deserve? This is what we asked Warren Axelrod, security expert, author and speaker. Here’s Warren’s response.
From the desk of Warren Axelrod: Why is the cyberspace policy boring? The answer I’m giving is one that security professionals will be able to identify with – to an outsider it’s boring. Virginia Heffernan in a recent New York Times Magazine article entitled “Lights! Camera! Inaction! People Using the Internet are Boring”. Ms. Heffernan discusses the various, mostly unsuccessful, attempts by filmmakers to create excitement when something, which would cause all sorts of reactions in the physical world, happens in cyberspace. The flashing of messages of doom and destruction on a screen does little to raise one’s pulse. It is only when the messages are linked to visuals of bad physical things happening, as in the Terminator or Batman movies or Die Hard and Live Free that anxiety increases in the audience.
The people tuned into the President’s announcement are the professionals at Homeland Security, the Pentagon and the utility officials protecting the three main electric grids. These are people who know that attacks are up year over year and the attackers are getting smarter and more devious every day. There were a couple of articles on the cyber speech the next day but not as many as one would expect – given the gravity of the situation. The news aggregation magazine, The Week, provided Cyber Security 101 in the article “The Rise of the Cyberspy”. This article focused on the Pentagon’s “near constant” cyber attacks by foreign hackers primarily from Russia and China.
So again, the general public, who depend so heavily on the Internet and computer systems and networks in general for their well being and economic progress, can’t seem to get excited about a President who actually uses technology and knowing the dangers is setting policy, making cyber security a priority. We can only hope that the steps we need to take to defend ourselves in the dangerous realm of cyber space won’t be delayed and prioritized out of existence as it was eight years ago. The new “cyber czar” may be greeted with some fanfare, but will likely find it as difficult as his or her predecessors to implement effective measures. If only cyber criminals had two heads and long tails that could decapitate an innocent bystander.
Postscript: Intellitactics is the chosen SIEM by intelligence and defense organizations on the front line of cyber attacks. Join Intellitactics every Tuesday to see what it takes to defend against cyberspys and hackers.