EDITOR’S QUESTION
HOW SHOULD
CIOS PREPARE
FOR SECURITY
CHALLENGES IN 2018?
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Security breaches are becoming increasingly
common and companies are being warned
to prepare for cyberattacks. We talk to
representatives from Telstra, Flowmon Networks
and Nexsan, who give us their opinion on how they
think CIOs can better manage their services and get
to grips with approaching cyberattacks.
L
ast year was a banner year for
cybercrime; more data was stolen in
the first six months of 2017 than in the
entirety of 2016. Gemalto’s Breach Level
Index found that over 900 data breaches
occurred during the first half of 2017,
compromising 1.9 billion records. According
to Jing Xie, Senior Threat Intelligence
Analyst for cybersecurity market leader
Venafi, this explosive development in data
exfiltration will continue in 2018.
In an even more ominous trend, the
number of sophisticated state sponsored
cyberattacks increased significantly last year.
“In 2017, attackers working for nation-
states focused on efficiency and return on
investment and they were very successful,”
said Xie. “As a result, we should expect to see
escalations and variations of similar attack
vectors this year.”
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Xie examined the condition of nation-state
sponsored cyberwarfare and offered these
predictions and insights for 2018: Nation-
state attackers will maintain their focus on
keys and certificates. The ongoing wrestling
match between super powers will move
from clandestine programs that are largely
carried out behind the scenes to more
public attacks aimed at critical infrastructure
and services. Due to vital security assets
controlling encrypted communication
between machines, many cyberattacks will
leverage compromised or rogue keys and
certificates. A nation-state with this power
can bombard critical infrastructure through
increasingly sophisticated variations of
attacks, sabotaging core services using
attacks derived from Stuxnet and Duqu.
Certificate Authorities may be targeted as
cyberweaponry. Cyber criminals sponsored
by nation-states may find ways to exploit the
trust models used to control communication
between machines. The easiest way to
accomplish this would be to attack or
manipulate Certificate Authorities and the
keys and certificates they issue. If successful,
this exploit vector would allow cyber criminals
to eavesdrop on a wide range of confidential
communications, intercept and redirect
encrypted traffic and target government
watchdogs and human rights activists.
Elections will face escalating attacks and
threats. We saw numerous state-sponsored
social media campaigns that concentrated
on fostering public doubt and fear, during the
2016 US presidential elections. Due to the
success of these campaigns, we should expect
additional attacks against local and national
elections. Some attacks may even utilise
fraudulent identities of both humans and
machines to steal and leak sensitive nation-
state data. Distressingly, these attacks are
occurring in elections around the globe.
“With every major nation-state expanding
both offensive and defensive cyber war
spending, public and private critical
infrastructure and communication providers
should expect to be caught in the cross hairs
of cyberwarfare. As a result of the cumulative
impact of powerful spending and attack
trends, we should expect to see at least one act
of nation-state sponsored cyberwarfare that
directly impacts citizens this year,” added Xie.
www.intelligentcio.com