Kevin McMahon, CEO of Cyjax Limited, discusses the ever-looming threat of cyberattacks facing small and medium-sized businesses today.
In March 2021, an important new report on national defence and foreign policy in the UK was published – ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age’.1 While in the report there is a focus on traditional forms of defence and the promise of an increase in spending, there is a noticeable emphasis on the cyber threats the UK faces.
These cyber-threats now include the development of adversarial nation-state cyber capabilities along three prongs. Firstly, exploitation and attacks which target and paralyse national critical infrastructure – specifically, ransomware and data destruction attacks that inflict devastating financial costs on corporations and the insurance industry. Secondly, hostile nation-states will continue to support long-running cyber-espionage operations focusing on the theft of government and commercial information. Finally, significant capabilities creating and propagating highly influential and damaging disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilising the political system have been observed.
Russia and China were identified in the report as posing the greatest threats to the UK. It is no coincidence that these two countries were singled out. State-sponsored threat actors from both nations have been engaged in offensive cyber-related activities for many years, carrying out well-documented and widely publicised cyberattacks against western organisations. Both have been accused of conducting hugely damaging campaigns against government and corporate websites worldwide.
Read the full article on Innovation News Network – here.
Innovation Platform Issue 8, containing Kevin’s article and much more, can be downloaded here.