During the first 20 years of the Internet era there was a widespread fear of threats from the Internet, but in reality it was fairly secure. The limited abilities and resources of the early attackers contained the threat to criminal activity and marginal damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recent advances in client computer security, in conjunction with the impact of time and Internet maturity, have created a population at ease and with and trusting of the Internet. In reality, the Internet has a reverse trajectory for its security, having become more unsafe over time. The threat no longer affects just individuals and businesses, but also the nation state. In almost 20 years concerns have been raised about what single hackers and cyber terrorists can do to a targeted society or individual. In the mainstream media, and our collective weltanschauung, hackers and cyber terrorists have been credited with the ability to create a digital Armageddon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fear has been the main driving source. In reality, hackers have not achieved any significant national disturbance or damage to the nation state in the last 20 years. Successful hacker attacks mainly stole information that affected a number of individuals or companies. The nation state stood unaffected. Traditionally hackers had little or no interest in destabilizing or challenging the state. The reasoning behind this could be as simple as there is no monetary gain for such activity. Cyber criminality is an enterprise that seeks to earn money through illegal activities and defraud others. That is one reason why fighting cybercrime has had such a low priority as measured by the number of prosecutions. The traditional cybercrime does not threaten the state, the government, or the societal order, and there is no sizeable harm to the general population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to summarize, the first 20 years of the Internet was secure compared to what we are facing know with very active state actors and state sponsored organizations, because their goals where limited. This has changed and it is a noticeable change because of the entry of state-sponsored organizations. Over the last few years there has been a shift in cyber strategy focusing on the national security. During the next decade the national security concerns in cyberspace are likely to override the earlier paradigm of focusing on securing individuals and single corporations. The attacks on individuals and corporations have become solely a criminalized act; meanwhile, the state considers attacks on the national critical infrastructure, the state’s core function, the state’s legitimacy and authority, and its military complex as attacks on the state itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the NSA and head of CYBERCOM, address with the public with the message that it is likely that we will have a major cyberattack within a decade it is not fear injection \u2013 it is a statement of high likelihood. The state actors seek to destabilize the targeted state, and to destabilize you need to rock a nation by its foundation, and this scenario have changed cyber security to the core because the old paradigm that has existed since IT-sec in the 1980s is gone. Adm. Michaels Rogers is on the trail of our future covert adversaries, which is a positive sign, because the cyber threats of tomorrow is for the first time a true national security threat when the attack is systematic with the intent to alter American policy and societal stability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Internet has become more sophisticated and less safe over the years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":39711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":130,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[16,130,24,58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1799],"class_list":["post-26712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-networks","category-net-defense-blogs","category-opinion","category-the-compass"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"ZCYFCWLO6FHJLEZD7GRJA5PHE4","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/the-compass\/net-defense-blogs\/2014\/11\/26\/mike-rogers-nsa-and-cybercom-head-is-on-the-right-track\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n