Cyber Warfare: How Lack of Due Care, Due Diligence, and Negligence
are Quickly Turning the World’s “Nightmare” into an Unwelcome Everyday Reality
It is October, and once more, we at Cyberwyze
join our nation in observing the yearly Cybersecurity Awareness Month with hope
and confidence for a more secure America, a luxury that we once took for
granted, but not anymore; the difference is so obvious, as cyberwarfare rages
on.
With the daily headline news, most times,
highlighting information security breach, it is obvious to all of us now that cyber
warfare is no longer a probability; it is now a global reality, more so for the
United States government and its citizens.
However, the United States is more than capable to confront this monster
and its perpetrators head-on and prevail.
This, also, is a reality. Cyber
warfare is no longer a “nightmare”, that can be wished away; rather it has
become a complex, nagging headache that won’t go away with an over-the-counter
medication. Therefore, it demands to be
ruthlessly responded to and eliminated, regardless of how long the battle rages
on. This is the reason the United States
cannot relax until she has overwhelmingly helmed in all who are bent on
destroying the U.S. government and its citizens regardless of the level of
their “frequency and sophistication of intrusions into United States networks,
and I confidently attest to the great job that the information security
professionals in this nation are doing to stop this monster.
However, considering the frequent breaches
and intrusions into our nation's networks, it is becoming increasingly
disconcerting how the lack of due care, due diligence, and negligence continue
to make all the efforts of some conscientious and selfless information security
professionals nothing but a load of frustration. Fair enough, the enormous number of daily
attacks is enough to engender security fatigue, however, there is a maxim that wisely
states that “he who is surrounded by adversaries is always on guard for his
life”. Therefore, to directly face this
challenge effectively and prevail regardless of the daunting nature of this
undertaking, the management and key stakeholders who are responsible for governance need to seriously
and diligently ensure that every “t” is crossed and every “i” is dotted; nothing
left undone with constant audit and monitoring of the activities occurring in
their respective organization's networks. Talk of
going the extra mile all the time―that is exactly what the information security
threat environment calls for, absolutely no dilly-dallying, or unnecessary
bureaucracy. This is war; it is either
fight, with absolute vigilance, or die. Period.
The importance for the U. S. government to mandate
putting in place sophisticated advanced persistent threats (APTs) and risk-mitigation
strategies to detect backdoors, trojans, and malicious codes to protect all the
nation’s computer networks, public and private, taking cue from what Microsoft
and other computer technology companies have done for their organizations and supply
chains can never be overemphasized . These strategies must, of
paramount importance, take into consideration speed as a frontline defense
strategy as well as due diligence (extra care and vigilance 24/7) among other
things if it plans to prevent any further intrusions into the nation's computer
networks, both public and private including individual citizen's homes and businesses, and, of course, to remain the world leader in information
technology. This type of action is
necessary to effectively guard against the theft of our sensitive information and destruction of our nation's critical infrastructure, logistical and operational plans, the
commercial information and intellectual properties and trade secrets of her citizens and their businesses.
So, without mincing
words, I ask us, what will it take for us to wake up and smell the coffee, and
understand the handwriting on the wall, and start taking the security of our
nation’s assets and customers’ sensitive information seriously, and desist from
mortgaging them at the altar of business margins or bottom line? This nation can no longer condone negligence,
and lack of due care and diligence, the most basic, non-technical house-keeping
countermeasure in the cybersecurity domain, which is annoyingly and unacceptably
so rampant within our organizations, as most have failed to put the security of
their customers as a primary security responsibility, choosing rather to secure
their bottom line at the expense of the source of their existence―their most
valuable asset―customers and their information.
That is the reason that the recent information security breaches
perpetrated on organizations such as Equifax, Yahoo, Target, to name a few, due
to gross negligence and lack of due care and diligence is downright unacceptable,
and must stop already! Our nation has
stringent information security laws, and now is the time to start seriously
putting those laws into execution to waking up security-irresponsible
organizations, because failure to do so becomes tantamount to aiding law
breakers to the doom of this nation, that is already unimaginably under
enormous millisecond-cyber-attacks daily.
Cybersecurity is everybody’s business, and
the least that we all, responsible citizens and users of information and the
cyberspace, can do, is to have a culture of due care and diligence, that goes a
long way in the current cybersecurity threat environment to securing our assets
and peace of mind to strengthen the efforts being made by security professionals in this
nation to effectively combat and eradicate cybercrimes. It is not enough to merely deploy and
implement expensive security technologies, while shirking the responsibility of
maintenance and conscientiousness (due care and diligence), which is what sets
apart mediocrity and excellence; just as it would be futile and total waste of
taxpayers’ money to build a road infrastructure, without the normal ongoing maintenance
work.
The fact is that we are engaged in an
unconventional warfare, and the American citizens need to understand it ; therefore, due care and diligence and active vigilance 24/7, is of utmost importance
for achieving resilience, victory, and thriving over cyberwarfare; anything less will be self-defeating and very
sad, because none of us would like the outcome, and that is the crux of the
matter!
