The threat landscape is changing. Cyberthreats pose a more common and severe obstacle to most of us than traditional terrorism now. This does not mean – going forward – that real ground-level threats should be ignored or belittled, and of course these threats pose physical harm as opposed to digital ones. Nonetheless, cyberthreats need a larger acknowledgment as a viable problem in the coming years. Cyber War is not a current problem for the U.S., but it very well could be in the future as more states play a role in hacking opposing countries’ corporations and businesses to influence markets in their favor.
Yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller and National Intelligence Director James Clapper, testified at the annual Worldwide Threat hearing regarding future threats the country faces. He estimated that cyberthreats will surpass terrorist threats in the near future. Saying, “Down the road, the cyberthreat, which cuts across all [FBI] programs, will be the number one threat to the country.”
So how is this affecting you now? Well currently, several countries are participating in corporate espionage. China, one of the main power players within this practice, is funneling intellectual property by the tera and petabytes from U.S. companies. Richard Clarke, former advisor to the president on cyber security, discussed in a recent video interview about China’s new influence in hacking U.S. companies (VIDEO).
Because hacking is largely an invisible threat, most corporations do not take security seriously. Many never realize they’ve been hacked and if they do, it’s usually months – sometimes years – after being breached. What we are seeing is that corporations are forced to take it seriously when they are informed by the U.S. Government – usually the FBI – that their data and intellectual property has been stolen. This threat doesn’t just pose a threat to corporations either, defense contractors need to take the threat seriously as well and outfit their IT ecosystem to protect against the advanced threat.
“The cyberthreat is one of the most challenging ones we face,” Clapper said. “Among state actors, we’re particularly concerned about entities within China and Russia conducting intrusions into U.S. computer networks and stealing U.S. data. And the growing role that non-state actors are playing in cyberspace is a great example of the easy access to potentially disruptive and even lethal technology and know-how by such groups.”
In the past year, we’ve seen high-level breaches like RSA, seen Symantec’s source code stolen, and even over 100 million records stolen from Sony PlayStation’s online network – just to name three. It’s time for Corporate America to take security seriously, and focus on protecting the most important part in the viability of their company: their intellectual property.
