Escalating Role of Cyber Security in our Geopolitical World

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Theresa Abbamondi

In the information security world, we frequently speak of the three pillars of security: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. A viable security posture must take care to protect all three, and it’s a delicate balancing act to find equilibrium without stifling the flow or compromising the integrity of information. Tweet This

Never is this more apparent – or the stakes so high – as in today’s geopolitical world. Here at home, recent examples of China’s breach of the OPM, North Korea’s breach of Sony, and Russia’s breach of the US’ Democratic National Committee (DNC) show the real world impacts of cyber warfare and the historical effect of these attacks.

Sometimes the costs are clear and definable – the loss of revenue from a movie not released – often, the impact is more theoretical. It’s precisely when the costs have fuzzy lines that we should be most alarmed. Phrases like ‘history changing’ seem to miss the point of both words, but it’s difficult to properly characterize the influence a nation-state cyber-attack can have in any other way. Will the DNC breach really impact the United States’ presidential election? How can we properly assess the down ticket ramifications? What about the normative policy implications from legislation enacted by the resulting governing bodies? Viewed from that lens, it’s hard to overstate the potential impact Russia’s attack can have over our lives for years to come.

Certainly, political espionage is nothing new, as a catalog of Hollywood films tells us. But in today’s connected world, it’s never been easier to steal state secrets from the comfort of a bureaucrat’s cubical half a world away. And guarding that connected world is a job that demands excellence and commitment.

Increasingly, we see evidence of distributed denial of service – DDoS – attacks throughout the advanced threat kill chain. DDoS attacks target the availability of information and attackers use it as a tool for both reconnaissance and obfuscation during malicious advanced threat attacks, making protection against DDoS attacks a necessary component of any effective security posture. Tweet This

At Arbor Networks we have a long history of protecting the world’s most significant events. From Olympics to elections, Arbor has been there to help ensure network availability while the world is watching. From pre-event health checks, to our unparalleled ATLAS intelligence and visibility into the threat landscape, to a best in the industry hybrid approach to application and volumetric DDoS attacks, Arbor stands as guardian of the connected world.