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Despite developing some of the cutting-edge technology brands, Asia has been one of the hot spots of cyber threats. There are so many challenges that exist and make the progress difficult on the international scale. Cyber-security has become an important dimension of peace and security in most of the Asian countries.
According to US security company Mandiant, many Asian organizations are becoming defendant against cyber-attacks. Asia’s companies and organizations are 80% more prone to hackers as compared to rest of the world. The report further stated that an average of 3.7GB of data has been taken in each attack, which means loss of a lot of information. But these so many incidents were not revealed on the public level for the reason of lack of breach disclosure laws in the region.
According to the chief technology officer of Mandiant’s parent company, Grady Summers,
“We knew responses to cyber-incidents here in Asia often lag those elsewhere but we didn’t know it was by this much”.
The team carried out an experiment as a part of the study and hacked into an organization’s network with its permission. They actually wanted to see how weak the security system was to sustain the cyber attacks. And as they expected, the security system of the organization was not strong enough by any means.
According to Mr Summers,
“Within three days we had the keys to the kingdom, if an expert group of hackers can do the same in three days, imagine what can they do on 520 days”.
National threat:
The threats emanating from the cyberspace can easily destroy a country’s could disrupt its economy, can create a national trauma or distract from a simultaneous attack. By not paying attention to the security gaps online, a country’ economic competitiveness can be compromised.
Examples for such attacks:
The history is full of examples where cyber security has been compromised and it resulted into hackers taking over the national and international platform for fraudulent purposes.
In Ukraine, hackers took over power stations and all the transport systems in the so-called smart cities. According to the report by security company Symantec, last year more then 500 digital identities were stolen. The underlying causes are man made and are increasing with the easy availability of the internet. Many individuals around the world especially teenagers are involved in these incidents. Hackers either want to destroy or use the stolen material for negative purposes. This is the reason financial institutions, education research, energy, aerospace, health care, defence, and governments have been the most favorite targets of hackers in the Asian countries.
Not enough is being done to prevent risks:
The regional stability in Asian countries is extremely fragile. Adapting the advancing technological environment is becoming more important which is proving as an additional stress for many economies. Asian countries are not very well-equipped when it comes to dealing with hackers nor they have the financial resources to improve their technology and expertise in this field. This is the reason cyber security is being ignored.
It would be more productive to raise our concerns regarding cyber threats. It will give the leaders a broader view on privacy and cyber security. It will help them to confidently balance he requirements against cyber threats, propel transformation, and pursue growth.
The Article originally appeared on BBC.
