Ride the Lightning

Will a "Cyber-Pearl Harbor" Wake Us Up to the Danger from Hackers?

December 8, 2014

Two years ago, former DOD Secretary Leon Panetta suggested that it might take a cyber-Pearl Harbor, complete with physical destruction and loss of life, to make the U.S. wake up to the dangers inherent in the vulnerabilities of its computers systems.

Hat tip to Darrin Behr (with Dave Ries close on his heels) for sending this story to me as I was packing for a Las Vegas jaunt.

The fascinating blog post from The New York Times offers the thoughts of Paul Kocker, one of the nation's best known cryptographers. He points to two charts as demonstrating why our cybersecurity is so dismal.

One shows the number of airplane deaths per miles flown, which plummeted to one-thousandth of what it was in 1945 with the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration in 1958 and stricter security and maintenance protocols.

The other chart (unsurprising to anyone who watches the information security world) shows that there has been more than a 10,000-fold increase in the number of new digital threats over the last 12 years.

As Mr. Kocher and other experts have postulated, there is a lack of liability and a sense of urgency with respect to the cyberthreats. We "fix" the Internet with Band-Aids. Cybersecurity is not well regulated – and a sense of urgency is missing even as our oil pipelines, railroad tracks, water treatment facilities and the power grid move – you guessed it – to the Internet.

We are SLOWLY waking up – for reasons the blog post documents in great and valuable detail. This is a must-read-in-full article for those interested in cybersecurity.

My own view is that we haven't had our cyber-Pearl Harbor yet – and that we won't react comprehensively and in depth until we do.

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