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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters

Collaborating on cyber-security - A private-sector imperative

by

20140529

Cy­ber at­tacks are on the rise, tar­get­ing busi­ness­es, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, me­dia out­lets, ecom­merce sites, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and even or­di­nary users.

With in­creas­ing so­phis­ti­ca­tion and im­pres­sive in­ter­na­tion­al co-or­di­na­tion, hack­tivists, crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions and na­tion states are us­ing high-tech sys­tems to com­pro­mise clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion and steal con­sumer da­ta.

In a tech­nol­o­gy-de­pen­dent world, cy­ber-at­tacks are a se­ri­ous, transna­tion­al threat, putting na­tion­al and eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty at risk. No na­tion can re­ly sole­ly on in­ward-look­ing, uni­lat­er­al strate­gies to pro­tect it­self. To de­fend against cy­ber at­tacks, col­lab­o­ra­tion is key.

Se­cu­ri­ty has tra­di­tion­al­ly been seen as the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of na­tion­al gov­ern­ments, tack­ling clear­ly iden­ti­fied en­e­mies on well-de­fined bat­tle­fields. In the dig­i­tal age, transna­tion­al cy­ber war­fare has com­plete­ly over­turned that cal­cu­lus.

In this new era, busi­ness is now on the front­lines of con­flict. The pri­vate sec­tor con­trols the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture sys­tems that un­der­pin our econ­o­my: from telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and fi­nan­cial ser­vices to en­er­gy and health­care. Crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture is a pri­ma­ry fo­cal point for cy­ber-at­tacks.

The ef­fec­tive se­cu­ri­ty of crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture is there­fore a pri­or­i­ty that goes far be­yond pri­vate sec­tor in­ter­ests, par­tic­u­lar­ly in de­vel­op­ing states. How­ev­er, there is no ef­fec­tive phys­i­cal or eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty with­out ef­fec­tive cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty. Cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty de­pends on ef­fec­tive, glob­al col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween gov­ern­ment and in­dus­try. This is why pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ment must evolve new col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach­es if they are to de­fend crit­i­cal na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture as­sets.

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