Security experts have learned a lot from 2016 about how cyber warfare has the ability to disrupt everything from energy and education, government and military activities. Whether it’s countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, guerilla groups, and rogue actors, the danger continues to grow with our reliance on digital tools.
There are several reasons why national and multinational organizations, with the aim of causing physical or economic harm, engage in cyber-war. They may wish to achieve a competitive advantage by robbing strategic business plans; causing catastrophic damage with a local utility tactical strike; using data from government and local governments in order to disrupt key industries such as the military, aviation, and education; or locking up hospital information systems in order to injure patients.
Addressing these risks is essential, as proven by recent high-profile attacks on public and private sector sectors, which have affected many government departments and companies. When a cyber-safety organization saw that attackers had selected the red team’s tools to identify vulnerabilities, it launched an inquiry immediately. SolarWinds’ Orion program has found a major vulnerability. Since many public institutions employ this software, there has been a terrifying breach of government networks. The Sunburst attack as it is known has been notorious for this assault on corporate and government networks.
Build strong connections to bolster security against malicious attacks.
All these examples show that cyber threats to the government and corporate sector are becoming increasingly sophisticated and frequent. It is obvious that a robust partnership between these two organizations is needed if these attacks are to be countered.
- Government agencies are not usually transparent because of national security considerations, but intelligence exchanges assist all stakeholders in opening discussions on risks and attacks to increase their collective knowledge. For example, while damage to SolarWinds may have been broad if the cybersecurity organization had not found out and communicated it swiftly with government agencies and police forces, it might have gone much farther.
- In terms of cyber awareness and security training for Federal workers, the world of corporations may learn from the government. Government guidelines can also contribute to further strengthening security for non-governmental groups.
- On the other hand, the government can learn from the private sector how to react and adapt faster. Recent surveys of government cyber safety professionals have shown that 65% of respondents believe cybersecurity transformation is too slow compared to businesses and 81% believe that cooperation with the private sector can speed up security operations.
- Both industries should seek ways to build more fruitful cooperation using strategies for privacy enhancement. Technologies such as algorithms of cryptography and data-masking are increasingly being utilized by banks to uncover financial crimes by sharing and analyzing information, without releasing sensitive information.
Prioritize Key Security Functions to Reduce Risk
Strong ties between public and private are a key step in fighting cyber warfare. However, organizations and companies will continue to operate at risk without the correct security architecture in place. Some of the main priorities are:
- Follow a DevSecOps approach while designing applications by taking security into account from the outset and build safety audits and compliance into normal continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) processes.
- Use recommended practices for security applications outlined in the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and it’s top ten lists of the most impactful risk security hazards for web applications.
- Enhance network security against man-in-the-middle attacks, wardriving, and other network assaults by educating staff about the risk of Wi-Fi access, mandating a sensitive network virtual private, and enhancing network authentication.
- During development using the tools Burp Suite, OWASP ZAP, and other code analysis tools, detect and address code injection vulnerabilities by regularly digitally scanning code in your build process.
- Secure vulnerable VPNs with aggressive authentication and patching. For the government, organizations used to closed networks, but with remote operations, this is of particular relevance to the same security problems as commercial enterprises.
- Recruit the best team for the job. Cybersecurity is a cross-disciplinary approach that demands a sophisticated professional understanding of each sector, including application development and networking, and the establishment of a sound framework.
Plan for the Worst
Organizations may follow every policy yet there may still be a breach, making it just as important as cybersecurity to have a crisis response strategy. In 2016, it was an average of 191 days for enterprises to detect an infringement and 70 days to prevent the infringement. A plan for crisis response calls for logging and surveillance systems to respond more swiftly to a breach. Forensic analysts, legal professionals, and potentially the Department of Public Affairs should be included in a response team to develop a plan to respond to incidents.
Global cyber warfare is a fatal reality and more and sophisticated attacks will continue to rise. It is impossible to combat them completely but building partnerships that will enable private and public sectors to be better equipped to identify the right instruments and technologies, employ teams that are ready for the challenge and create a solid crisis plan that will help safeguard people, institutions and business throughout the world.
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