A cyber-attack could affect us all, especially cyber attack that destruct public sectors. Hereby you can think about attacks on our infrastructure or on transport related services. Often cyberattacks starts with compromising IT components. However, the effects of these attacks might influence the function of a physical object, like bridges or lock gates. This happens when Operational Technology (OT) systems are compromised. Therefore it is important to keep both IT and OT infrastructure safe in order to keep our society and organisations free from any cyber-attack (TNO, 2020).
Security operation centers (SOC) are crucial when it comes to security strategies. The SOC is a facility that houses an information security team that is responsible for analysing and monitoring an organization’s security system. On other words, they have to be capable of detecting and eliminating potential cyber-attacks. In the near future there will be a holistic automation of the SOC, including the right amount of human-machine interaction, together with the usage of AI to correlate huge amount of data and patterns. In this way it will be able to automatically detect, analyse, validate, respond and intervene in critical situations (TNO, 2020).
We have seen the example at the Maastricht University last year. At this university a major ran software had been installed, and because disabling the ran software from the computer network was expensive and very time costly, the university decided to pay the fee. This hack could have been prevented when the university was connected with the right security platform. In this case it’s only a university, but imagine what happens when hackers will be able to hack bridges, or other vital parts in the Netherlands (RTL, 2019).
In my opinion it is relieving to see that tech companies are working together to prevent such disasters from happening. Since more and more interaction happen online, it is important to secure ourselves.
References
Consortium targets automatic prevention of cyber attacks. (2020, September 28). TNO. https://www.tno.nl/en/about-tno/news/2020/9/consortium-targets-automatic-prevention-of-cyber-attacks/
RTL. (2019, March 28). “Cyberveiligheid waterkeringen niet waterdicht.” RTL Nieuws. https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/4657846/waterwerken-bruggen-sluizen-beveiliging-hacker-hacken-rekenkamer
Hi Nick! Very nice blogpost you wrote here! I agree that cyber attacks are becoming more and more a strategy to attack society. Sometimes to steal sensitive information, ore to get money. It is hard to know what the motives are and to find the ones behind the attack. I can remember, one or two years ago, that we had so many DDOS attacks on banks, which created a lot of payment failures and created deep frustration toward banks. Also, the trust in banks (which is important to have a solid financial system in a country) decreased because of the attacks. I really would like to hear what you think about this kind of crimes!
Hi Nick, interesting article.This has become even more relevant the 18th of September, after an cyberattack/ransomware caused for a 78-year-old woman to die, since the emergency room was under attack that moment and a network outage forced the ambulance to go to another emergency room. Researchers called this the first death caused by a hack. I was wondering if you think that even hospitals and such should be connected to a SOC? Theoretically, demand has caused for more complex systems to be implemented on all levels of software infrastructures as well as different companies. But more complex systems could also mean more ways for hackers to affect the system, and in case of my example even be deadly. And should all businesses be connected to a SOC, what could happen if these centers are compromised? I agree that tech companies should work with the public sector to secure itself, I only th