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Citi Perspectives for the Public Sector |
2014
31
In 1940, the most successful public-private
partnership of the modern world began when
FDR reached out to the CEOs of GM, US Steel
and Sears. Then, like now, the public had not
yet fully bought-in to the magnitude of the
danger. Then, like now, a bold new public-
private partnership was the only way to
overcome a looming threat.
As the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit against
Chinese officials accused of hacking into U.S.
corporate networks demonstrates, the cyber-
security issue has risen to the most senior
level of government and corporate decision
makers. The recent U.S. Defense Science Board
Task Force on Cyber-security concluded that
the U.S. faces the digital era equivalent of a
major military threat. This threat will yet again
require public-private partnerships of historic
proportion. The conclusion of the U.S. Task
Force report is sobering: “It is not possible
to defend with confidence against the most
sophisticated cyber attacks.” “The adversary is
in our networks.”
The digital era reality is that hacking is now
a service. Aramco can be shut down and
NASA can be hacked. The Syrian Electronic
Army can pretend to be the AP and spook
global markets. At the rate of 7,000 per day,
Distributed Denial of Service attacks continue.
Three out of four financial institutions have
experienced attacks by hackers. Dropbox cloud
storage can be penetrated. IT outsourcing
service providers create new vulnerabilities.
Blackhole malware toolkits delivered through
“Software as a Service” target our networks.
The digital era is creating data at a truly
explosive pace. The “big data” experts talk
about 3 zettabytes of data, which simply means
3 bytes with 21 zeroes behind it. In layman
terms, just imagine that every two days the
world now creates the same amount of data as
we did from the beginning of time until 2003.
New technologies and applications abound
– mobile device proliferation, home banking,
cloud storage, social networking, software as
a service, GPS and NFC, remote access, bring
your own device and IT out-sourcing – to name
several of the most common. Each of the above
holds out the hope of great promise for society.
Yet each brings with it the potential perils of
cyber-vulnerabilities.
Mobile device hackers target the weakest
links in the chain, a chain through which
citizens and customers increasingly share
Personal Identifiable Information and execute
financial transactions. There were 74,000
The recent
U.S. Defense
Science Board
Task Force on
Cyber-security
concluded
that the U.S.
faces the
digital era
equivalent
of a major
military
threat.