Graham Croock | Director | CyriskCo Advisory | mail me |
It is a common belief that ‘data is the new oil’, and Information Technology (IT) supports almost every modern-day transaction, from the delivery of electricity and water to banking, shopping, manufacturing, and correspondence.
The confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, and accessibility of information that enable these operations must be ensured to avoid the failure of related and unrelated information, devices, and activities. These failures expose businesses and individuals to the risk of reputation, income, assets, and the very endurance of the business or organisation and as a going concern. As a result, like sustainability, cybersecurity is now a critically important ‘C-suite’ issue.
These failures expose businesses and individuals to the risk of reputation, income, assets, and the very endurance of the business or organisation and as a going concern. As a result, like sustainability, cybersecurity is now a critically important ‘C-suite’ issue.
A complex & dynamic landscape
Just as past business operations might well have contributed to climate change and sustainability challenges, many of today’s cybersecurity issues result from practices that fail to consider the broader implications of a host of decisions affecting system scale, agility and interoperability, and therefore, sustainability.
System interoperability facilitated by the rapidly advancing sophistication of IT has furthered an ever-expanding global marketplace and economic growth. But that marketplace with its associated growth is now subject to increased risk, partly due to lacking cyber security, from the growing distrust of IT.
Sustaining cyber security in the modern economy means being intentional about agility, scalability and, most importantly, system interoperability, and the critical choices needed to enable it securely.
As with most business operations today, information and communication technology increasingly, if not wholly, support traditional sustainability actions and requirements identified by the United Nations Global Compact 10 Principles and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The cyber sustainability problem
It is accepted that the private sector, together with educational institutions (Universities), research, develop, own, and operate a substantial portion of the global information and communication technology assets.
Nation-state attackers are developing sophisticated attack vectors that pose an increasingly significant risk to the sustainability of Internet of Things (IoT) control systems that manage infrastructure. This dichotomy causes concern, particularly nuclear installations, water and power generation and medical infrastructure, which become easy targets for a sustained and catastrophic attack.
- Risks
Unfortunately, an evolving risk threatens today’s internet and the economic and social good that it supports.
Sophisticated threats associated with this evolving risk are causing and contributing to increasing levels of global mistrust of big data, information, communications technologies and the rapidly expanding collection of interconnected devices, colloquially described as the Internet of Things (IoT).
Scaling compliance to ever more complex and broader networks, including computers, mobile, and other smart devices, have become increasingly ineffective in securing interconnected networks. The consequential mistrust affects or has the potential to severely affect or disrupt all economic sectors, including financial services, manufacturing, retail, real estate and medical.
Notwithstanding the development and implementation of privacy law, it is contended that globally, educated people have reduced levels of confidence in the privacy and security of the records that private and government institutions maintain in today’s modern digital age. This increasing state of reduced confidence in data and information deters consumers from participating in digital transactions and numerous e-commerce activities.
- Pandemic
The upheaval in society caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has forced users to place significant reliance on e-commerce activities.
A direct correlation between increasing threats associated with ‘Identity theft’, ‘credit card and banking fraud’, ‘threats to personal safety’ and the ‘loss of control over personal data’ supported by the uncontrolled collection of personal data by online services are out of control and are causing substantial financial losses. Consequently, the increased levels of distrust are easy to prove. The ultimate effect of this could be a significant reduction in reliance on engagement in critical economic and civil online services.
- Primary focus
Today’s economies run on data, and for too long, a primary focus has been on…
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Read the full article by Graham Croock, Director, CyriskCo Advisory, as well as a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the October/November 2021 edition of BusinessBrief.
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