Cyberwar report: Israel, Finland best prepared for conflict Israel, Finland and Sweden are more prepared than larger nations to fight a conflict in cyberspace, according to a McAfee-backed cyber-defence study. The cyber-security report (click to enlarge) The study, Cyber-security: The Vexed Question of Global Rules, is based on interviews with experts in the nascent field by by …
the Russians and the Finns fought on and off throughout the duration of WW II, with the lines moving back and forth, punctuated by a couple of peace treaties. In the end, only a small bit of land changed hands. It bears noting that the Russians were on 'our side' and the Finns, faced with numerical and materiel superiority, turned to the Nazis for help. Nevertheless, their toughness and resilience surprised everybody — especially the Russians.
I did! Got a great Girlie, happy here! (even tho' it was -27C where I live yesterday)
But in history, both Russia and Sweden have. Take me a couple of hours drive to get to the Ruskie border. Plus, if I suddenly feel a desire to get some flat-pack furniture, IKEA is an hour away. (I can walk between the two without ID)
Seriously, is it any surprise that one of the leading IT security firms (F-Secure) is here?
"according to a McAfee-backed cyber-defence study."
What's the point of taking it seriously? This is from a company, that for the longest time, would hand out "hacker safe" medals to websites that were vulnerable to XSS attacks and SQL injections. Their definition of "cyber defense" or "security" raises serious questions about their judgement.
For example, rating Spain, France and Germany in the same category as Denmark and Estonia? Those three alone account for about 30% of the infected machines in Europe alone, and about 20% of the global market (Germany is the worst offender in that list).
Why is Brazil rated higher than Mexico? In the entire LATAM region, Brazil has more infected hosts than Mexico by a factor of almost 20.
India should be rated a single "star", giving them 2 1/2 is way too good.
Why am I looking at infected hosts? Because what bloody good will the best external-facing firewall do you if you have a scourge within the inside, ready to strike out and do damage from within? Absolutely zero.
Make the claim that it is an end-user problem. It certainly is -- but who allows those users on? The ISPs and telcos, who help to set security policy within the country as they set and configure the infrastructure. If ISPs took a more active approach to security inside and outside, they'd be better off and ranked higher. Any entity that takes either an apathetic or ignorant view of internal security doesn't have a good policy in place.
Two of my favorite countries!
Yeah, I know, the combination is strange. It has its origins.
That said, if I was going to go on a vacation with my family, I'd pick Stockholm over Helsinki. Sorry, Finns.
One wonders who would want to invade http://www.perisoft.org/israel.gif Israel, too. What are you going to get - 20 square miles, a few chip fabs, a beach, Coke machines that cost 5 bucks a pop, a couple dozen Kibbutz, and a whole shitload of royally pissed off Jews? I spent two weeks there, and trust me, you don't want any part of it . So why bother?
The big positive about Israel for the single guy is the 20-year-old army girls, milling around in fatigues and carrying Uzis that, by comparison, look like the absurd swords you see anime characters with. Probably best for your health to avoid cheesy pick-up lines, though.
Of course, if you had invaded in order to get the opportunity, there wouldn't be any left to give you a beatdown, since none of them would have surrendered.
Perhaps the IT people take a similar stand.
As far as Finland goes, I can't tell you much about the girls, aside from that none of them had assault rifles. Kind of a disappointment, really.
"As far as Finland goes, I can't tell you much about the girls, aside from that none of them had assault rifles. Kind of a disappointment, really."
Mate of mine, Leutenant in Finnish Army could shoot your target to bits*
Then, she'd demand a drink for it.
*Assuming she was actually aiming at yours, not just having a bad day....
Well, that would just save my wife the trouble. :D
By the way, anyone else getting comment box strangeness? If I click in the main comment box 'too soon' it activates, but leaves the on-load text there, editable. It will edit, but still in the gray color of the on-load text.
One time I successfully posted that way; this time I tried to go check the title line, and it deleted everything in the 'Post' box. It then did some crazy flashy-flashy back and forth when I swapped between the two.
Seems fine if you don't piss it off by clicking early. Odd.
"The study highlights a looming skills shortage in cyber-security and a lack of private-sector involvement in cyber-security exercises as potential problems."
One can only defend against cyber attack if one knows how and where and what to successfully attack, and that creates somewhat of an enigmatic dilemma, for anyone worthy of being considered a cyber security expert with such sensitive attack knowledge realises that their skills in launching and mentoring and monitoring unattributable attacks are many times more valuable to a client and themselves ......... and if a client into defence of critical and strategic systems, such as a GCHQ or a NSA or a whatever, requires virtual defence expertise, then they will have to pay nothing less than a small fortune to protect their dumb SCADA systems from .......... well, what it actually is, is someone else who is considerably smarter in the field than they are.
Given the complete incompetence with which they approached - or rather avoided - the mass illegal interception of communications in the UK by companies allegedly linked to the Chinese military and the lack of action over information being illegally shared with companies in the US (all at a time when they are trying to talk up the need for stronger security online) I think that the answer is a very definite 'yes' where GCHQ are concerned.
They really don't have a clue.
Why am I not surprised that it favors the EU as it came out of a Brussels based consultancy. One that neither the US nor UK will show anything of value to, due to logical (though presumptive) ties to the EU and/or NATO as a Brussels consultancy will very likely be judged, unfairly or not, to have.
On a sidenote, Im not here to bash the EU, but you need to keep in mind there is only so much that we or the UK would be willing to show a potential adversary. Also this whole "cyberwarfare" thing is so far beyond overhyped that its going to wind up turning into Cyberfatigue and reduce preparedness overall which does a disservice toward security as a whole.
In my uninformed opinion, thats probably an underestimation of Russia's capabilities. They have proven experience in this (vs Estonia). Couple this with Russia's relatively low dependance on networked infrastructures, (yes I've been there) and a population that (again, my opinion) seems to be generally far more IT savvy and capable than eg the UK (hacking/cracking/irc/botnetting and other '1337' activities are much more part of the 'culture' there than in the UK where its more facebook etc), and I would say it was probably a better ranked player than illustrated here.
"Cybersecurity is as important as border security".... OMFG, what a funny joke!!
The USA has border security?!!
Hahahahahahah! No, stop, you're killing me!
Omg, I can't take it! Make it stop!
Running Symantec on your work computer is about as close an analogy as you can make to USA's <quote>border security<unquote>. Because both are trivial to breech, reactionary, and only change in any meaningful way *AFTER* a newsworthy event has ALREADY OCCURRED.
Americans talking about "border security" is like Brits talking about "football fans' restraint"
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