Cyberwar: Nation-state cyber attacks threaten every company (TechRepublic)
ZDNet’s Danny Palmer explains the current realities of global cyberwar and why nation-state cyber-campaigns have become “a problem for everybody.”
Democracy is a fragile institution. It’s software. It’s code. And it can be hacked.
You can toughen up our systems. You can keep out the intruders. You can protect our national sovereignty, which in the 21st Century requires digital walls, perhaps even more than physical ones.
Securing our systems is your job. You need to be the heroes we know you can be. You are on the front lines of this fight. Demand what you need in terms of resources from your management to strengthen your systems. Learn everything you can.
Find the weaknesses and shut them down. The next battle for sovereignty will be fought, not on some foreign battlefield, but in our data centers, on our mobile devices, and in our networks. You are our last best hope.
You stand between truth, justice, and freedom, and manipulation, penetration, and exploitation.
There is one more thing we can do, and here, I include in “we” all Americans, not just ZDNet’s army of IT professionals. This is a way every American can fight back against the propaganda and digital invasion of a malignant foreign power.
When we each start building up a big head of steam, getting ready for that next huge rage-filled argument with someone who just doesn’t get it, we can remember that the Russians started this fight. When we hate our fellow American, we’re just dancing along to their tune. Take a deep breath. Try to find some ground for agreement.
Remember, every time you respectfully communicate with another American, every time you practice civility with someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum, every time you avoid a fight in favor of finding common ground, you are striking a blow against foreign attackers.
It hurts them when we get along. So let’s get-along them right to hell. Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, Right or Left, we are all Americans. We might often have to agree to disagree. But nobody here is going to agree to be Putin’s puppet.
Our fellow Americans are not the enemy, as wrong-headed or pig-headed as they may seem. We have an actual enemy, and as the Attorney General reported to Congress, they have been systematically attacking our way of life.
It’s time for us to fight back. We can fight back by securing our technology and we can fight back by not letting them sucker us into hurting each other. We are the United States for a reason. It’s time to unite against these systematic attacks, stand up for each other, and recognize who the real enemy is: the Russian government.
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