Cyberfare Case Study

Victoria Schultz MIS 260 B. Hecker Are We Ready For Cyberwarf ar? 1. Cyberwarf be refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage. It is a cause of information warfare sometimes seen as analogous to conventional warfare, and in 2013 was, for the first time, considered a larger threat than Al Qaeda or terrorism, by many U. S. intelligence officials. 2. U. S. government security adept Richard A. Clarke, in his book Cyber War (May 2010), defines cyberwarfare as actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nations computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption. The Economist describes cyberspace as the fifth domain of warfare, and William J. Lynn, U. S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, states that as a doctrinal matter, the Pentagon has formally recognized cyberspace as a new domain in warfare . . . which has become just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space. 3. In 2009, chairwoman Barack Obama declared America s digital infrastructure to be a strategic matter as facility, and in May 2010 the Pentagon model up its new U. S. Cyber Command, headed by General Keith B.Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), to defend American military networks and attack other countries systems. The EU has set up ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency) which is headed by Prof. Udo Helmbrecht and there are now further plans to significantly expand ENISAs capabilities. The United Kingdom has also set up a cyber-security and operations centre based in Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the NSA. In the U. S. owever, Cyber Command is only set up to protect the military, whereas the government and corporate infrastructures are primarily the responsibility respectively of the Department of Homeland Security and private companies. In February 2010, top American lawmakers warned that the threat of a crippling attack on telecommunications and co mputer networks was sharply on the rise. According to The Lipman Report, many key sectors of the U. S. economy along with that of other nations, are currently at risk, including yber threats to public and private facilities, banking and finance, transportation, manufacturing, medical, schooling and government, all of which are now dependent on computers for daily operations. In 2009, President Obama stated that cyber intruders ask probed our electrical grids. 4. The Economist writes that China has plans of winning informationised wars by the mid-21st century. They note that other countries are besides organizing for cyberwar, among them Russia, Israel and North Korea. Iran boasts of having the worlds second-largest cyber-army.James Gosler, a government cybersecurity specialist, worries that the U. S. has a severe shortage of computer security specialists, estimating that there are only about 1,000 qualified people in the country today, but needs a lodge of 20,000 to 30,000 ski lled experts. At the July 2010 Black Hat computer security conference, Michael Hayden, former deputy director of national intelligence, challenged thousands of attendees to help devise ways to reshape the Internets security architecture, explaining, You guys made the cyberworld look like the mating German plain.