Resilience in the era of cyber attacks
Summary
As society becomes more digitally enabled and dependent, our leaders can no longer turn a blind eye to the cyber conflicts that threaten our national security and the lives of our citizens on an almost daily basis. For instance, in May 2021 a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack took down the websites of more than 200 organisations across Belgium, including government, parliament, universities, and research institutes. The nature of ‘behind the screens’ cyber battles is that, unlike physical security threats, the vast majority of the time the general public remains unaware of their scale and severe impact on the networks that keep the country running. The message of the UK’s Integrated Review is clear – effective use of data, trusted security partners, and a regulatory standard will be pivotal to a comprehensive cyber strategy that can sufficiently detect, disrupt, and deter adversaries. The advanced nature of these systems and level of expertise required for threat detection means governments and organisations must be willing to invest in public-private partnerships and joint ventures if they hope to succeed with a prevention-first approach to cybersecurity.