FEATURE: CYBER SECURITY
F
rom e-services, to m-services,
and now smart-services, the
levels of instrumentation,
interconnectivity and intelligence within
digitised environments is rising. We
believe that it is crucial for a ‘fourth i’
referring to immunity be included in
the outlook and further development of
connected societies, and a robust cyber
security framework established.
DarkMatter recommends that
organisations, and indeed participants
within smart city ecosystems, adopt a
pro-active approach to cyber security
resilience in which they assume a
state of breach in order to develop the
defences and mitigation mechanisms
to minimise any possible disruption
caused by a cyber security incident.
potential cascading threat of an
interconnected yet not fully integrated
system.
Unknown hackers broke into the
Bangladesh central bank’s systems
and stole credentials for payment
transfers. The hackers then bombarded
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
with nearly three dozen requests to
move money from the Bangladesh
bank’s account there to entities in
the Philippines and Sri Lanka Bank,
successfully transferring $81 million of
an intended $1 billion.
Entities need to better understand
their respective risk profiles before any
mitigation can begin in earnest. This
involves understanding their assets, the
full range of threats they may face and
from whom, and the vulnerabilities. For
digitised societies to become successful
and sustainable they need to develop
end-to-end monitoring and mitigation
protocols in the face of cyber threats. It was subsequently reported in
the media that the cyber security
credentials of the Bangladesh central
bank were below par, with a named
British defence contractor having shown
that the SWIFT software used to make
payments was compromised, enabling
the hackers to send money around
the world without leaving any trace
in Bangladesh. The entry of the hack
into the global financial transaction
system raises concern over the systemic
integrity of the entire network, which
has 3,000 financial institution owners
and users.
Growing media coverage of breaches
globally indicates that the number
and sophistication of cyber attacks
is rising, and nations, organisations,
and individuals have to become better
protected against such threats. In another cyber security breach that
was widely reported on, last December
over 200,000 buildings lost power in
the Ukraine, endangering lives during
the coldest time of year, caused by a
targeted control-system attack.
A recent attack against the SWIFT
(Society for Worldwide Interbank
Telecommunication) international
financial transaction system, for
example, focused attention on the Cyber incident statistics from across
the globe also paint a very real picture
of systems and networks being placed
under significant and persistent threat.
For example, a total of 295 incidents
AWARENESS AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE SCALE
AND SCOPE OF CYBER SECURITY THREATS NEEDS
TO BE COMMUNICATED WIDELY, RESULTING IN AN
APPRECIATION THAT TECHNOLOGIES, TOOLS, PROCESSES
AND SYSTEMS THAT HELPED SECURE DATA IN THE PAST,
ARE EXACTLY THAT, FROM THE PAST
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