Cyber-Security: Wake up Call!
As we look forward to a connected society, how cyber secured we need to be to ward off an attack similar to Sony Pictures, Ashley Madison or the likes?
The world is talking about a connected society, boasting of the innovative technology transition that promises to keep us connected at any point of time, but at the same time, it is also groping in the dark to find an answer to a Paris like terror attack, which was designed in such a manner in the cyber space that left the whole world baffled.
Here, not to forget, hacking of online dating platform Ashley Madison or the hacking of Sony Pictures’ computer systems that resulted in leakage of thou- sands of internal emails and documents.
Moving forward, with the entire buzz around Internet of Things, one thing is imminent that we face a greater risk of security breach and it calls for a stringent security measure to keep such attacks at bay in the future.
At a recent industry event ‘Cybercrime, Cyberlaw and Cybersecurity’ in New Delhi, organized by Pavan Duggal and Associates, industry experts voiced their concerns over the rising incidents of cyber and mobile crimes. They said that the challenge today is that everything is connected to everything else. The moment we are on the internet we are reachable and this has also led to rise in the dangers of cyber crimes.
The event witnessed around 100 speakers around the globe, including Justice TS Thakur, Chief Justice of India Designate, Margaria Popova, Vice-President of the Republic of Bulgaria, Preeta, Maloor, Strategy and Policy Advisor in the Corporate Strategy Division, International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Indrajeet Banerjee, Director, UNESCO, said: “In a world where we are inching
closer to adopting IoT in a bigger way, we recommend that we protect critical infra such as smart cities, power grids, government buildings and other things with utmost urgency.”
“Every crime committed today has a mobile (or a personal computer) somewhere involved and we are not able to speed up with the level of knowledge that is required in the system to track the cases. Proper training and lack of knowledge always remains a challenge,” said Navdeep Singh Virk, Commissioner of Police, Gurgaon, Haryana.
Echoing similar views, Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India and President, Cyberlaws.Net, said: “Economics are at risks as cyber criminals and hackers are becoming far stronger day-by-day. In other words, cyber space has become the hot spot where the stage has been set for the next war.”
Connected Society vs Cyber War
Over the last seven-eight years, the adoption of digital technologies for enterprises has become a strategic mandate, they cannot live without adoption of digital technologies or otherwise the fear looms large that they are going to be irrelevant over the next three-five years.
These digital technologies basically are Cloud, which gives them core functionalities and agility, scalability, cost optimization, Social Technologies, which provides enterprises the ability to influence customers’ behaviour, Big Data, which helps in predicting through intelligence gathering for the markets and customers, and Mobility, which gives enterprises the capability to understand customer experience.
These four technologies are extremely important and become a nexus to form the foundation for IoT. So, in other words IoT is based on these technologies and therefore, whatever issues of vulnerabilities exist in digital form, it gets carried forward with these digital technologies.
And so it is crucial to look at IoT from two perspectives backend, where all these digital technologies reside, and frontend, where IoT introduces devices that bridge the physical world with these digital technologies and because of this bridge what happens is that these digital technologies can manipulate the internet world with the physical world, which brings in some unique issues related to IoT.
“This is for the first time in history of human beings that digital technology can directly impact human lives and so safety is the crucial issue in IoT. And, therefore there needs to be standardization of devices which should be governed by an international government body,” opined Felix Mohan, CEO, CISO.
TR Dua, Director General, TAIPA, said: “The vast majority of businesses do not have the resources and capability to detect cyber crime, with technologies there are vulnerabilities. Most of the businesses are not going to be limited to home devices, it’s going to be machineto-machine, connecting million devices. So, there is a need to move towards a proactive threat awareness program.”
Besides, a formulation of a national security for defending cybersecurity mechanism could be of utmost importance, he added.
Probir Roy, Co-Founder and Board Director, Paymate, said: “About 70% of frauds today have some cyber element in it. In fact, any war today can be won without firing a single bullet.”
Moving ahead, cyberlaws need to be further evolved so as to meet with the expectations and needs of the relevant stakeholders of the digital and mobile ecosystem.
Creation of an international network of cybercrimes and cyberlegal professional could be an important voice in the further developments of cyberlaw, cybercrime and cybersecurity across the world.