I don’t know why everyone is so worried about who hacked Sony in Hollywood. Does it really matter who hacked a movie studio or even an entertainment company? I’m more concerned about my local water provider.
The truth is that every day thousands of cyber-attacks hit our country from either government sponsored hackers or private sector hackers. And while they are hacking us, we are hacking them. It’s more likely that we hacked them first.
Where the actions of the movie company to pull the movie from public release is being represented as an affront to someone’s First Amendment rights, I don’t agree. On the one hand, every business that operates today is forced to consider political correctness in how they interact with people at every level. Business decisions regarding risk management take place every day. The way we allow people to litigate everything makes the lawyers and insurance companies the power brokers as usual. If you want to talk about violating rights, lawyers and insurance companies are the biggest violators. The decision to not release the movie is not subject to judicial review.
There is no connection between an act of cyber-theft and our Constitutional rights. Unless we can definitively identify the individual or individuals who did the deed, we don’t know whether North Korea was a player or not. It’s most likely that China is the guilty party since they attack us so frequently but we really don’t know.
If hacking networks in cyber-space is the battleground of the future then our brightest minds should be working on both defensive and offensive tools. I have no doubt that they are already and their success may well be protecting some government installations now. The problem in our country and around the world is that the potential of the internet has expanded faster than our ability to control it.
For some reason we thought we could develop the productivity aspects without the corresponding defensive measures. All these companies that sell us software to protect our personal computers could very well have come from people who created the viruses in the first place. First you create a peril then you offer protection from it for a price. It sounds like racketeering to me.
It could be that businesses should reconsider how they are connected to the net. If there are aspects of your business you don’t want exposed to hackers, keeping the proprietary data on a physically separated network may be necessary.
The fact that it took an attack on a do-nothing entertainment company to get the headlines about cyber-attacks is both disappointing and not a bit surprising. It just exposes the shallowness of the press. This topic has been a story for quite a while. It will be interesting to see if the national media companies are still covering this topic in six months.
What I want our governments to do is develop plans to protect the public infrastructure from cyber-attacks just like they do to plan for disasters. At every level of government, the needs are a little different and the efforts to address them should be tailored appropriately. If protection comes from newer more effective firewalls then that’s where the resources should be focused. If the protection comes from removing the power grid from the public internet then that should be done. Since the impact of cyber-warfare is likely to affect us all, it should be a good opportunity to have a cooperative dialog between the parties and a plan developed.
Private companies need to make business decisions based upon the best available science and technology to protect their individual interests.
If the internet as we know it is the only way to conduct business today then we’re screwed.
No Loss for Words
Who Hacked Who?
by Steve DanaI don’t know why everyone is so worried about who hacked Sony in Hollywood. Does it really matter who hacked a movie studio or even an entertainment company? I’m more concerned about my local water provider.
The truth is that every day thousands of cyber-attacks hit our country from either government sponsored hackers or private sector hackers. And while they are hacking us, we are hacking them. It’s more likely that we hacked them first.
Where the actions of the movie company to pull the movie from public release is being represented as an affront to someone’s First Amendment rights, I don’t agree. On the one hand, every business that operates today is forced to consider political correctness in how they interact with people at every level. Business decisions regarding risk management take place every day. The way we allow people to litigate everything makes the lawyers and insurance companies the power brokers as usual. If you want to talk about violating rights, lawyers and insurance companies are the biggest violators. The decision to not release the movie is not subject to judicial review.
There is no connection between an act of cyber-theft and our Constitutional rights. Unless we can definitively identify the individual or individuals who did the deed, we don’t know whether North Korea was a player or not. It’s most likely that China is the guilty party since they attack us so frequently but we really don’t know.
If hacking networks in cyber-space is the battleground of the future then our brightest minds should be working on both defensive and offensive tools. I have no doubt that they are already and their success may well be protecting some government installations now. The problem in our country and around the world is that the potential of the internet has expanded faster than our ability to control it.
For some reason we thought we could develop the productivity aspects without the corresponding defensive measures. All these companies that sell us software to protect our personal computers could very well have come from people who created the viruses in the first place. First you create a peril then you offer protection from it for a price. It sounds like racketeering to me.
It could be that businesses should reconsider how they are connected to the net. If there are aspects of your business you don’t want exposed to hackers, keeping the proprietary data on a physically separated network may be necessary.
The fact that it took an attack on a do-nothing entertainment company to get the headlines about cyber-attacks is both disappointing and not a bit surprising. It just exposes the shallowness of the press. This topic has been a story for quite a while. It will be interesting to see if the national media companies are still covering this topic in six months.
What I want our governments to do is develop plans to protect the public infrastructure from cyber-attacks just like they do to plan for disasters. At every level of government, the needs are a little different and the efforts to address them should be tailored appropriately. If protection comes from newer more effective firewalls then that’s where the resources should be focused. If the protection comes from removing the power grid from the public internet then that should be done. Since the impact of cyber-warfare is likely to affect us all, it should be a good opportunity to have a cooperative dialog between the parties and a plan developed.
Private companies need to make business decisions based upon the best available science and technology to protect their individual interests.
If the internet as we know it is the only way to conduct business today then we’re screwed.
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