Cyber weapons a bigger threat than missiles?

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 06:12

Business IT - Security

A number of "world-leading" policy-makers and cybersecurity experts have responded to a survey saying that an arms race is taking place in cyber space and that cybersecurity is more important than missile defence.

The survey was undertaken by Brussels-based defence and security think-tank, the Security and Defence Agenda (SDA) for McAfee. To compile the report The SDA, says it "held in-depth interviews with some 80 world-leading policy-makers and cybersecurity experts in government, business and academia in 27 countries and anonymously surveyed 250 world leaders in 35 countries."

Key findings included:
- 57 percent of global experts believe that an arms race is taking place in cyber space;
- 36 percent believe cybersecurity is more important than missile defence;
- 43 percent identified damage or disruption to critical infrastructure as the greatest single threat posed by cyber-attacks with wide economic consequences (up from 37 percent in McAfee's 2010 Critical Infrastructure Report);
- 45 percent of respondents believe that cybersecurity is as important as border security.

The United States, Australia, UK, China and Germany were all ranked behind smaller countries such as Israel, Sweden and Finland for 'cyber-readiness'.

"The core problem is that the cyber criminal has greater agility, given large funding streams and no legal boundaries to sharing information, and can thus choreograph well orchestrated attacks into systems," said Phyllis Schneck, vice president and chief technology officer, global public sector, McAfee.

"Until we can pool our data and equip our people and machines with intelligence, we are playing chess with only half the pieces."

 The full report "Cyber-security: The Vexed Question of Global Rules" is available here.