War on Cyber Terrorism

Glenn Moore

Have you seen the story by 60 Minutes on cyber threats?  I highly recommend you watch it: 

The Story In a Nutshell

Cyber terrorism has crossed over from the realm of potential into the realm of likely.  The story provides examples of how power grids, financial networks, government agencies and even defense systems are already being compromised. State sponsored cyber attacks are proving to be the new battle field.

 

 

Here's My Take:

How do we combat such an insidious new enemy?  It starts with awareness.  We can no longer stick our heads in the sand and hope the problem doesn't strike.  Just as the Department of Homeland Security did a good job of educating the public on terrorist threat levels after 911, we need to adopt similar approaches with cyber terrorism. 

Americans are smart and resourceful.   We can handle bad news.  When our collective will becomes mobilized, we tend to solve our toughest challenges.    

 

We Need an All Out War on Cyber Terrorism

Let’s take the gloves off and commit more American ingenuity and resolve to the problem.  To begin, we need to get serious about confronting state sponsored cyber hacking.  We are attractive targets because we have so much valuable intellectual property to steal.  Our diplomatic efforts need to focus on a simple message:  If we catch your country stealing or terrorizing, there will be serious repercussions and no US response option is off the table.

 

However, we can’t just defer to the government on this one.  Defeating cyber terrorism will take a lot more than a new set of government programs and rules.  Much of our information infrastructure like the energy grid and financial system is privately controlled.  Keeping our country safe from cyber attack will require additional resources and oversight from both the public and private sectors.  As aware citizens, we should encourage this and be willing to pay for it if necessary. 

 

We need to let our government and private industry know that we care about security.  It’s not just a geeky technical problem; it’s an American public safety problem.