Loving the Cyber Bomb - The Dangers of Threat Inflation in Cybersecurity Policy

Over the past two years there has been a steady drumbeat of alarmist rhetoric coming out of Washington about potential catastrophic cyber threats. For example, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last year, Chairman Carl Levin said that “cyber weapons and cyber attacks potentially can be devastating, approaching weapons of mass destruction in their effects.”1 Proposed responses include increased federal spending on cyber security and the regulation of private network security practices. The rhetoric of “cyber doom”2 employed by proponents of increased federal intervention, however, lacks clear evidence of a serious threat that can be verified by the public. As a result, the United States may be witnessing a bout of threat inflation similar to that seen in the run-up to the Iraq War. Additionally, a cyber-industrial complex is emerging, much like the military-industrial complex of the Cold War. This complex may serve to not only supply cyber security solutions to the federal government, but to drum up demand for them as well.

Spotlight

BetterCloud

BetterCloud is the first SaaS Operations Management platform, empowering IT to define, remediate, and enforce management and security policies for SaaS applications. Over 2,500 customers in 60+ countries rely on BetterCloud for continuous event monitoring, quickly remediating threats, and fully automating policy enforcement. BetterCloud is headquartered in New York City with an engineering office in Atlanta, GA.

OTHER WHITEPAPERS
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2020 Cyber Security Predictions

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whitePaper | September 29, 2022

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Unidirectional Security Gateways: Enabling Secure IT-OT Communications

whitePaper | June 28, 2022

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Mid-Year Threat Landscape Report

whitePaper | November 17, 2019

The first half of 2019 brought interesting developments in malware targeting popular operating systems, in hardware and software vulnerabilities affecting consumer and businesses, and in the increased number of attacks aimed at (and even carried out by) IoTs. With the money motive driving the proliferation of malware, cybercriminals are nothing if not resourceful when developing new malware strands or coming up with more successful attack vectors. The number of malware samples roaming the internet is about to reach the 1 billion1 milestone.

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Ransomware: How to prevent, predict, detect & respond

whitePaper | January 9, 2020

The malicious programs known as ransomware have attracted a significant amount of coverage in the mainstream media over the last few years, as major companies and organizations announced that their operations had been affected by the threat. Examples of affected businesses include hospitals, universities and major international corporations [2, 3]. Despite the alarming nature of the threat, the way ransomware gains entry onto a user’s device is actually no different from the methods used by other threats. Ransomware is most commonly spread by two methods.

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Spotlight

BetterCloud

BetterCloud is the first SaaS Operations Management platform, empowering IT to define, remediate, and enforce management and security policies for SaaS applications. Over 2,500 customers in 60+ countries rely on BetterCloud for continuous event monitoring, quickly remediating threats, and fully automating policy enforcement. BetterCloud is headquartered in New York City with an engineering office in Atlanta, GA.

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