Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
Is There a “Cyberwar” Around the Corner?
Wednesday, April 07, 2010 by Bryan Anderson
The U.S. is no stranger to waging wars on multiple fronts, but
there's one theater of war which many Americans might not be
familiar with: the digital front. Internet security and safety is
the number one concern for experts interested in building and
expanding broadband access- not just for business, but for all
internet users.
As we've touched on before, the National Broadband
Plan intends to build a fast, public broadband connection spanning
every nook of the United States. After yesterday's announcement that FCC could not enforce net
neutrality, that plan may be threatened and ultimately
altered.
However, building nationwide access cannot come at the cost of
safe networks.
Many IT experts fear that overseas attacks will expose our
fragile infrastructure. In an article at computerworld.com, 61% of surveyed
IT managers said there was a "high" threat of an attack being
launched by a foreign nation sometime in the next year. At the same
time, more than four out of 10 respondents in the survey said that
they believe the U.S. government's ability to defend against the
attacks is "poor" to "fair" at best.
As the new iPad paves the way for another market of
internet-access devices, experts still question the amount of enabled security,
especially in regards to enterprise activity. If this new device
slowly creeps into the business setting, then companies and public
officials will have another object of attention when it comes to
cyber espionage.
In an interview, Verizon CEO and Chairman Ivan
Seidenberg admits that his industry needs to invest more money on
R&D, while pointing out that his company looks at 5 billion
security breaches every day! He also goes on to say:
"Well, we're only one small piece of it. So there are probably
30 (billion) or 40 billion. So just think of -- it's a real issue,
by the way. Cyber security is a real issue. We spend -- our company
alone -- spends in the hundreds of millions of dollars protecting
our customers' network."
With the amount of malicious activity coming out of foreign
countries, we can only imagine the amount of daily internet hackers
attempting to reach into personal or government data.
How worried should we be with our current security technology?
Is it right to think that the U.S. is on its heels when it comes to
digital defense systems?
Until Next Time -
Matthew Hymel
Switchfast Technologies
Chicago IT Support &
Consulting
Rochester
IT Support & Consulting
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