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
