Cyber-Responders Seek New Ways to Respond to Cyberattacks

Over the last decade, intrusion threats have evolved to encompass everything from teenagers in their basements trying to breach networks for fun, to professional criminals stealing credit card information. But today’s threats have escalated to theft of corporate and government intellectual capital, said Christopher Ling, senior vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton.

“Advanced, persistent threats created by nation states have leaked out onto the black market, and bad actors can buy them,” Ling added. “It is a great concern, because traditional cybersecurity weapons are being outgunned.” The conventional approach of perimeter defense involves making lists of suspicious signatures and then telling systems: “When you see this signature, stop it.” But that approach is failing in an era of zero-day attacks (a term that means anti-virus developers have had zero days to address and patch the vulnerability). The Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s nuclear complex is an example of an attack that wasn’t discovered until the damage was already done. Local and state government offices that may not see themselves as prime targets for theft of intellectual property or financial information can be used as the weak link to get at financial institutions, Ling said. “Banks use government websites all the time for things like title searches. Attackers can spot a weakness in a county government website and attack the bank from there.”