Description
CYBER SECURITY CONFERENCE:
EMERGING STRATEGIES, CHALLENGES, NEEDS & TECHNOLOGIES
Last year, DoD networks suffered an onslaught of an estimated 360 million cyber attacks. As cyber attacks on US federal and commercial computer systems increase at alarming rates, the risk for national security to be compromised is also growing. Through cyber espionage and data theft, China acquired Joint Strike Fighter (JSF-35) aircraft plans. On eBay, a hard drive containing US missile defense data was for sale. Both the State of Virginia and the University of California, Berkley suffered network and database breaches to their healthcare IT systems. Critical infrastructure is being hit by an estimated 1000 or more attacks from hackers and malicious code every year. The financial and economic impacts of a one day cyber sabotage to disrupt energy infrastructure and US financial transactions is estimated at over $35 billion USD.
The 2010 national cyber budget will be in the excess of $7 billion USD, but is that enough? Given our ever-increasing reliance on digital connectivity, and with the reality of intensifying cyber threats from states such as China and Russia, it is a national imperative that the US directly engages these threats in order to avert potential catastrophe.
