Cyber Warfare

While parts of the world are struggling to breathe amid smoke, fire, weapons and ammunitions, less attention goes to the rising threat of cyber warfare. Unfortunately, many government agencies and private organizations lack a cogent cybersecurity strategy. It is important to remember whether it is a dictator-controlled nation, a totalitarian regime, a monarchy, or a superpower with democratic values- neither of which have regret in using cyber warfare as a state-backed weapon and policy.

Both the friends and foes take help of nation state-sponsored cyber-attacks just to twist (even break) the opponent’s backbone. Besides, how many countries, government agencies, and private organizations are prepared to abide with the cyber laws and cyber security measures to ward off state sponsored cyber-attacks? The organized cyber-criminal groups turn this ‘lack of focus and under preparedness’ into ‘an opportunity’ to strike hard in this much interconnected digitalized world.

In the past few years, cyber crooks extensively used targeted attacks (attacks on IAM systems), ransomware attacks or phishing attacks as weapons to cripple an organization, government agencies, public infrastructure.

Risks to Watch

    1. Many countries across the globe have formulated stringent cyber security and incident response laws. While government organizations, federal agencies and private organizations are supposed to adhere to the laws, many times we witness a yawning gap between knowing the law and implementing it. It is important to align cybersecurity posture with those laws formulated by authorized cybersecurity awareness programs and regulatory bodies. 
    2. Today Identity and access management (IAM) is not just about business enablement it is also about economic and business resilience. As pointed out in this article, threat actors are increasingly targeting digital identities as well as the IAM infrastructure itself. It has serious implications. Risk leaders must continuously assess and reassess their IAM programs, IAM architectures, roadmaps to protect digital identities. 
    3. Sometimes, challenges arise in finding quality IAM resources and skills who can seamlessly monitor the mandatory IAM policies that need to be followed diligently. There is an urgent need to build an ecosystem that produces sufficient qualified and highly skilled IAM consultants.

The Bottom-Line:

Sometimes simmering geopolitical tensions explode into cyberwarfare. To secure digital assets, multinational corporations and government agencies need to strengthen their cybersecurity frameworks, particularly their IAM posture.