The Economist’s extensive and interesting July article on CyberWar is essential reading for management in all organisations that have any reliance on the internet for communications, data sharing, business partnering, or business platforms.
The collateral damage for businesses, in any cyberwar, could be huge. Assuming, for the moment, that the Internet itself is able to survive most forms of war carried out across it, the reality is that many organisations simply don’t have adequate defences in place today to keep themselves protected and safe from the electronic warfare being waged acorss the infrastructure.
As a minimum, all organisations should take steps to secure their network perimeters. This is relatively straightforward to do: it involves a penetration testing exercise, carried out by an external, professional security testing company, who will identify all potential vulnerabilities in your network defences and provide you with structured advice as to what remedial steps should be taken.
You may form the view that cyberwar is not a significant threat for your business; there are, however, very close links between those currently involved in cybercrime, and those who might be involved in either cyberterrorism or cyberwar. Dr Mehan’s book, CyberWar, Cyberterror, Cybercrime, sets this all out very clearly. As result of what she’s saying, one has to assume that the only sensible course for the average organisation is to assume that they will be badly hurt if they don’t put their security house in order and to take the necessaty steps to ensure that their network defences are secure,
