When a company is breached, it is akin to obtaining a disease no one wants and no one wants to admit to having. With reputations and trust on the line, companies are hesitant to broadcast a breach. The Australian Crime Commission estimates that the annual cost of cyber crime to Australia is more than $1 billion in direct cost.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently announced the government’s $230 million Cyber Security Strategy. “We need to pay more attention to cyber safety, to cyber hygiene, if you like” said Turnbull, “securing our devices, protecting them with appropriate credentials.” It is hard to gauge exactly how much cyber crime truly is, because of business’ reluctance to admit that they have been breached.
“It’s a cat-and-mouse game” said Bob Flores, former CIA chief technology officer and now partner at Cognitio, a US cyber security consultancy. With technology constantly changing, there is a need for more real-time openness from companies who are hacked.
“There are two kinds of companies that exist in the world: those which know they have been breached, and those which have been breached but don’t know it” – Bob Flores
There are four different categories for cyber criminals: nation states, organized criminals, ‘hacktivists’, and “script kiddies”. The nation states include China and terrorist groups such as Islamic State. Organized criminals are motivated purely through financial reward. ‘Hacktivists’ disrupt particular businesses or groups, because they disagree with them. Lastly, “script kiddies” are P-plate hackers who try to break into intelligence agencies or financial institutions just for bragging rights.
Currently, the public is predominately kept in the dark about government’s cyber capabilities and business’ ability to withstand attacks. Australia seeks to change this and make cyber hacks more transparent.
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Find more from Bob Flores on CIO.com. And find more about Cognitio here!
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