Back Ground

We probably all remember the concern and publicity surrounding the 2010 Stuxnet (a.k.a Olympic Games) virus. The new documentary Zer0 Day’s from Magnolia studios and directed by Alex Gibney provide some very interesting new insights on the events leading up to the cyber-attack on the Iranian nuclear plant in Natanz. The documentary delves into what Gibney calls the “massive clandestine operation involving the CIA, the NSA, the US military and Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad to build and launch secret cyber “bombs” that could plunge the world into a devastating series of criss-crossing attacks on critical infrastructure, shutting down electricity, poisoning water supplies and turning cars, trains and planes into deadly weapons.”

In previous blogs I have spoken about Cyber Security – The Internet of Things and Where Are We Headed? , The Escalating Political Cyber War, President Signs Secret Cybersecurity Policy for US Military , Cyber War – Cause, Effect and Mitigation and When does a cyberattack warrant armed response?. The Zer0 Days documentary ties together the common threads shared by many of these subjects.   We are living in an age where there are allegations of foreign government involvement in cyber-attack to influence our elections (see The election hackers: Some uncovered points) and threats of cyber-attacks from many other terrorist and subversive entities against our electric grid and other financial infrastructures.

The currency of cyber war is information and our information is now more at risk than ever before. Sadly we also are struggling with educational systems which do not seem to foster the kind of STEM development needed to develop the cyber warriors required for our defense. In other blogs I have spoken about the substantial shortfall in our current cyber security workforce (see Security Workforce Statistics and Security Specialist Job Statistics). It is estimated that there are at least 3 open jobs for every qualified cyber expert with about 1 million open jobs in 2016 and 2 million expected by 2017 and we are just at the beginning of the rise to an expected 50 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices and that does not include smart phones.

Call To Action

As we move into a new federal administration with a deeply divided population and deeply divided political parties we as individuals, communities and political parties need to do our best to come together to focus and work on initiatives which will address our cyber security needs and the education of our cyber security workforce. It is not enough to have a strong offensive cyber capability as discussed in Zer0 Days we must also build cyber security into our new products, supporting infrastructure, and information systems and this will require a skilled and experienced workforce to do this. Now is the time to focus on this.