The face of war is changing as the world’s infrastructure is interconnected and the cyber theater becomes a focus for militaries around the world. We have yet to see a full-scale war between nations at the fore of the digital revolution but recent conflicts offer a picture of how cyber will affect the future of warfare.
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“The future of cyber warfare is another dimension of conflict,” said Mark Testoni, president and CEO of SAP National Security Services (NS2). “But we’ve already learned a few lessons from history.”
“They immediately came in and shut down their networks,” Testoni said. “They blew up their Internet and immediately created communications and command/control issues — power, utilities, telecommunications networks.”
But cyber does more than just add another offensive capability. Due to the interconnected nature of modern infrastructure — from the power grid to the financial sector to private industry — cyber broadens the attack surface by an exponential factor.
For Testoni, examples like these show the need to secure American networks, including critical infrastructure and the private sector.
