We have seen two years ago the first serious attempt to attack a nuclear power plant with a malware (Stuxnet) and the entire security industry as well as governments have started to take the entire issue very seriously. Basic utilities like electricity, water supply, gas for our cars and even food supplies depend on the availability of computer networks. It is to be expected that if there are assets which are important to someone in the Internet, there will be eventually also someone who will try to misuse them.
Yes, the trend from last years is pretty clear in regard to cyberthreats. There will be no longer millions of malware out there, but those that will continue to exist or will newly appear, will be very serious threats.
More and more is being done with help of computers and networks and even in households there are more and more devices connected to the Internet. “Serious threat” needs also to be redefined in this light. What five to ten years ago was considered “serious” – defacing websites, trojans that were executed on certain dates to spread some messages – can’t be compared with what is today being considered serious: human lives and critical infrastructures.
On a personal side, our life has started to have two sides: offline and online. We see also that the offline side gets more and more support from the online side because we use computers almost everywhere. This means that we must protect our online life as we protect our houses and cars from thieves or damages. We must think today to protect digital assets which 10 years ago were not even seriously taken by most adults: online identity protection, Facebook protection, personal health records (which are now almost exclusively online), online games, instant messaging and so on.
© Copyright 2012 Sorin Mustaca, All rights Reserved. Written For: Sorin Mustaca on Cybersecurity
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