We’ve already witnessed an immense amount of change in the world of cybersecurity, what could possibly happen in the next 20 years? Which technologies will become essential, will AI and IoT present the dangers everyone’s talking about, and what attack vectors will rise to prominence?
Here’s our take on the future of cybersecurity:
We believe that cyberwar will become this generation’s nuclear annihilation challenge. Because the nature of cyberwar is completely different, we’ll need to find new ways to achieve some kind of global stability. That must include control over cyber weapon proliferation.
Although it has become cliché, the term paradigm shift really applies to what’s happening all around us right now. While it appears to ordinary Americans that we live in a peaceful society thousands of miles removed from our adversaries, in reality, their weaponized computers are only milliseconds away from ours. And the government institutions we have relied on to protect us from physical attack are nearly impotent to do the same in the cyber realm.
In terms of the proliferation of cyber weapons, the NotPetya disk wiper worm that ran amuck across Europe in 2017, which caused over $10 billion in real damages, appears to be the direct result of the US National Security Agency’s loss of control over a cache of cyber weapons, including an infamous one called Eternal Blue.
We can expect to see more cyber-attacks like NotPetya in the years ahead. In fact, if you want to see the future of cyberwar, be sure to study the cyber-attacks that have already been directed at Ukraine, including the cyber-induced black-out during Christmas 2015.
If you want to delve more deeply into these current issues, get David Sanger’s book, The Perfect Weapon and stay tuned for more from the CRO Blog.