Cyber Security as Emerging Socio-Political and Economic Weapon

Cyberspace is the ever evolving frontier for online personal and national security. Are you aware that you're always a target on the internet? It is important to constantly review and have discussions about your internet security outlook as an individual, organisation and even national cyber security.

The UK government is investing £1.9 billion to implement its National Cyber Security Strategy and setting up a fund to develop skills in this area. They are also actively exploring options for a new UK Programme Supporting Cyber Security in the Commonwealth. The proposed programme would help developing Commonwealth countries to protect their populations from cybercrime and cyber security harms, build resilient digital economies and more safely implement ICT for development programmes. How will you be affected?

At the PAC Business Seminar on Investment, Trade and Career Opportunities, Post Brexit which aims to steer your thoughts in the right direction by providing critical information, Dr Joseph E. Ikhalia, Ph.D., (@IkhaliaJoseph ) will discuss Cyber Security as an Emerging Socio-Political and Economic Issue: Impact on New Skills and Career Development focussing on The threat landscape, Economic impact of cyber attacks and Career opportunities.

Protecting valuable intellectual property and business information in digital form against theft and misuse is an increasingly critical management issue. Internet safety or cybersecurity has been identified as one of the most serious economic and national security challenges facing the world today. The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ report on “Economic impact of cybercrime II ” suggests that the UK cyber breaches have hit 93% of large corporations and 87% of small firms, with these attacks frequently criminally motivated. In some circumstances, governments may even be the real perpetrators of politically motivated attacks, occasionally resorting to hiring criminal gangs for the purpose of avoiding attribution themselves.

The online security challenge for stakeholders is to identify the extent of cyber attacks, most commonly attacked sectors (like banking, insurance, stock markets and ICT), insider risks, cost of hacking attacks, impact on GDP, country losses and technology mitigation assessment.

The impact of cyber-attacks on the UK economy increases the cost of doing business and it distorts the pattern of long term investments. A 2017 report by Accenture (cost of cyber crime study) suggests that cybercrime is costing organisations about 12 million dollars each year, accelerating by an average of 23% annually since 2015.

Whether managing cyber security incidents themselves or spending to recover from the disruption to the business and customers, organizations are investing on an extraordinary scale but present spending priorities indicate that much of this is misallocated toward security tools that fail to deliver the greatest proficiency and effectiveness.

However, experts argue that cyber security intelligence systems deliver the highest positive value to organisations with cost savings of US$2.8 million annually, according to the Accenture 2017 report. As a result, career opportunities for cyber threat intelligence analysts may continue to surge in relative proportions to the growth of cyber-attacks.

Different communities are impacted in various ways to different degrees. This depends on their level of preparedness. For instance, at a personal level, people that have installed anti-virus computer and internet security apps on their phones and computers are less likely to be affected by hacking and related attacks than those that haven’t such system integrity and security apps. Also, people that have taken necessary training are more likely to benefit from post Brexit opportunities in this sector than those that haven’t. Therefore issues of ongoing importance will need to be appraised regularly. We must inspire youths in our community to train for careers in cyber security. Here are some questions to ponder about.

1. How will these threats impact you? Are you preparing to deal with them?
   
2. How are you preparing yourself to take advantage of the opportunities presented by these threats?
   
3. How can you position your career and acquire necessary skills available from current training & development programs?
   
4. Are you aware that the UK government pledged to invest £1.9bn over 5 years as part of the National Cyber Security Strategy 2016 to 2021 ? The strategy sets out the government's plan to make Britain secure and resilient in cyberspace. The investment will be focused on defending UK’s systems and infrastructure, deterring adversaries, and developing a whole society capability – from the biggest companies to the individual citizen.
   
5. How much of that investment can you benefit from in terms of training and salary as a cyberspace professional?
   
6. Are you aware of the UK Government’s Cyber Security Skills Immediate Impact Fund? Have a look online for the CSIIF Guidance for Applicants
   
7. As a community, what can we do apart from these seminars to help our people get the right mix of skills and properly represent us in the various board rooms?