As one of the biggest threats to
national security, “Cyber warfare” is growing. For the past few years, the
Chinese military has been hacking into the computer systems of US firms.
Everyone from newspapers – the New York Times, for example – to defense contractors
has been targeted.
It’s easy to dismiss the threat
of ‘cyberwarfare’ as another scare along the lines of the infamous ‘Y2K’
millennium bug. (Back then, we were warned that planes would drop from the sky
and people would be trapped in lift shafts for days because computers couldn’t
handle the change of date from 31.12.1999 to 1.1.2000.)
On a more mundane – but for most
of us, more consequential level – criminal gangs’ intent on harvesting credit
card and bank details which are becoming ever more sophisticated. That means
companies are under increasing pressure to ensure their systems are as secure
as they can make them. Even experts admit that it’s hard to judge the full
scale of the threat. But don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. This isn’t
just tech industry propaganda...
