World leaders have been told today that a coordinated cyber attack could have catastrophic consequences.
The report, released today, claims that we are fast approaching the time where cyber weaponry and cyber attacks is becoming ‘ubiquitous’.
While it is clear that singular attacks cause much damage and detrimental effect to systems, a coordinated series of events could have consequences, the likes of which have yet to be seen by the current society.
The report has been produced ‘on the heels’ of the attacks by the hackitivist group, Anonymous, who targeted companies such as Visa and Mastercard in protest to their repsonse to the controversial Wikileaks debacle.
Robert Chapman, CEO of Firebrand Training, says:
“We train professional Ethical Hackers to protect the nation’s IT systems. It is becoming more apparent that an Ethical Hacker’s job is beyond protecting their company’s interests. They are protecting the safety and financial interests of the whole nation.”
“The Government has clearly indicated that it intends to tackle the very-real threat of cyber attacks head-on. A key enabler for this is to introduce more Ethical Hackers. Surely we’d prefer an Ethical Hacker to find a vulnerability in our IT systems, before a terrorist does?”
“As the ‘Hacktivist’ group Anonymous has recently demonstrated, major corporations – such as MasterCard, Visa and Amazon – can very quickly be sabotaged. If an organisation isn’t protected in the first instance, it must act quickly to put things right – these kind of companies can lose thousands of pounds for every second that they are down”
“In today’s world of natural and terrorist disasters, we can’t afford for IT systems to fail. Imagine an incident, where the emergency services can’t be contacted, or safety processes can’t be initiated. It’s unthinkable.”
It is becoming clear that the risks of such attacks are increasing and a coordinated attack will probably become innevitable.
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