McAfee warns of cyber warfare
Security giant McAfee today launched a new report urging public and private sector organisations to collaborate more effectively to ensure that critical national infrastructures are able to withstand any future cyber warfare attacks.
The firm's fifth annual Virtual Criminology Report argued that there must first be put in place an accurate definition of cyber warfare, in order to differentiate attacks launched by disaffected hobbyists from large scale state sponsored warfare.
This definition should be dependent on the source of the attack, the motivation, the scale and the level of sophistication, argued McAfee's principal security analyst for Europe, Greg Day.
"As a term it is almost overused - we have to define a framework for what can be called cyber warfare so that the private sector and governments can understand the problem," he added. "The reality is the scope of the problem is likely to increase as we all become more reliant on technology."
Day argued that because much of a country's critical national infrastructure is run by the private sector, it is vital that government and private organisations have a close dialogue about what proactive measures and precautions should be taken.
Day said that cyber warfare would likely happen in the future due to it being a lot cheaper, easier and bloodless to achieve than the real thing.
"A while ago the US deputy general attorney soke about a cyber Pearl Harbour - well unless we define the problem there probably will be one; a massive wake-up call for us all," he added.
Reproduced from an article published by v3.co.uk
© v3.co.uk
The original article can be viewed here:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2253269/mcafee-warns-cyber-warfare
Permalink Bookmark Digg this story
