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Risk Central
Digital Edition
2017 RIMS
Cyber Threat Will Get More Difficult
“The sky is not falling” when it comes to cyber security, but the threat is a growing challenge for companies.
“I am not a cyber apocalyptic kind of guy,” said Gen. Michael Hayden, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, who currently is a principal at the Chertoff Group, a security consultancy.
Gen. Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and NSA, and principal, The Chertoff Group
“There are lots of things to worry about in the cyber domain and you don’t have to be apocalyptic to be concerned,” said Hayden prior to his presentation at a Global Risk Forum sponsored by Lockton on Sunday afternoon on the geopolitical threats facing the United States.
“We have only begun to consider the threat as it currently exists in the cyber domain.”
Hayden said cyber risk is equal to the threat times your vulnerability to the threat, times the consequences of a successful attack.
At present, companies are focusing on the vulnerability aspect, and responding by building “high walls and deep moats” to keep attackers out, he said. If you do that successfully, it will prevent 80 percent of the attackers.
“It’s all about making yourself a tougher target than the next like target,” he said.
But that still leaves 20 percent vulnerability, so companies need to focus on the consequences: It’s about response, resiliency and recovery, he said.
The range of attackers is vast, including nations that have used cyber attacks to disrupt Sony (the North Koreans angry about a movie), the Sands Casino (Iranians angry about the owner’s comments about their country), and U.S. banks (Iranians seeking to disrupt iconic U.S. institutions after the Stuxnet attack on their nuclear program), he said.
“You don’t have to offend anybody to be a target,” he said. “It may be enough to be iconic.”
The world order that has existed for the past 75 years “is melting away” and the world is less stable.
And no matter how much private companies do, it may not be enough.
“The big questions in cyber now are law and policy,” Hayden said. “We have not yet decided as a people what we want or will allow our government to do to keep us safe in the cyber domain.”
The U.S. government defends the country’s land, sea and air, but when it comes to cyber, defenses have been mostly left to private enterprises, he said.
“I don’t know that we have quite decided the balance between the government’s role and the private sector’s role,” he said.
As for the government’s role in the geopolitical challenges facing it, Hayden said he has seen times that were more dangerous, but never more complicated.
The world order that has existed for the past 75 years “is melting away” and the world is less stable, he said.
Nations such as North Korea, Iran, Russia and Pakistan are “ambitious, brittle and nuclear.” The Islamic world is in a clash between secular and religious governance, and China, which he said is “competitive and occasionally confrontational” is facing its own demographic and economic challenges.
“It’s going to be a tough century,” Hayden said.
