Cyber war: Modern warfare 2.0

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"A critical outage at a large banking group is likely to be more damaging that a sewerage works, given that IT is more central in the business/consumer interface," Day told IT PRO.

Joffe agrees, warning that "criminals have learned that their efforts are best spent aiming where the most money is." But he added that in any nation/state conflict "the economy is easier to attack via cyberspace rather than kinetic vectors".

Of course, in any armed conflict the biggest victim is the innocent public, and that's likely to be the case with cyber war.

Exit strategy

OK, the time has come for a tactical withdrawal from this feature. So what have we learned from talking to our panel of cyber war experts?

Well there's no doubting that the UK, whether you are talking in terms of government, business or the individual, is vulnerable to cyber war attack courtesy of our dependency on the internet and networked technology.

However, there is equally no doubt, it would seem, that what most people should really be talking about is less cyber war and more cyber defence.

As Colonel Williamson suggests, this involves being prepared to use offensive tactics but these can only be effective if the basis of any cyber threat is properly understood.

John Walker, managing director of security forensics and analytic outfit Secure-Bastion, is also a member of the ISACA Security Advisory Group and lead of the EURIM Cyber Security Group.

He told us that having had "firsthand experience of high investment US operations" and having "observed the US approach to dealing with such encountered Cyber-Strikes" that these are "dealt with on the same schema as if it were a ballistic missile flying toward the homeland of the USA."

He goes on to insist that the connected world has "encountered focused and sustained attacks targeted against UK, and EU on-line assets".

Walker warns of a "very real and current exposure manifesting from the absence any realistic levels of investment to counter such dangerous and known opportunities, which can inflict wire based harm."

As we stated right at the beginning, this is no game.

Modern Warfare 2.0 is real enough and, like the trailers for the best Sci-Fi movies it has been restricted to so far say, it's coming to a screen near you soon...

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