Ger­ard Best

Elec­tron­ic se­cu­ri­ty threats lev­els are on the rise glob­al­ly, and the stakes are get­ting high­er.

Kasper­sky Lab's Glob­al IT Risks Re­port (2014) es­ti­mat­ed that, af­ter a da­ta breach, small and medi­um sized busi­ness could spend up to $22,000 on staffing, train­ing, and sys­tems. Larg­er en­ter­pris­es could po­ten­tial­ly spend up to an ad­di­tion­al $59,000 on staffing, $35,000 on train­ing, and $75,000 on sys­tems, the re­port said.

The Caribbean is far from ex­empt. Com­put­er net­works in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor are in­creas­ing­ly un­der at­tack by a va­ri­ety of ma­li­cious sources, and suc­cess­ful at­tacks can cause phys­i­cal dam­age, eco­nom­ic loss and oth­er cas­cad­ing ef­fects that could dis­rupt ser­vices, com­mu­ni­ca­tions or trade.

The en­gi­neer­ing need­ed to strength­en the re­gion's dig­i­tal de­fens­es is not on­ly tech­ni­cal but so­cial, says Bill Wood­cock, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Pack­et Clear­ing House, a US-based non-prof­it re­search or­gan­i­sa­tion. Speak­ing on cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty at the re­cent­ly held Grena­da ICT Week, in St. Georges, Wood­cock said the key is to strength­en the re­gion's In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture.

"One of the best strate­gies for gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty is to in­vest in crit­i­cal in­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture and strength­en the hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty with­in the re­gion to analyse vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, ver­i­fy emerg­ing threats, and ex­e­cute mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies," he said.

Es­tab­lish­ing re­sources such as In­ter­net ex­change points, do­main root servers with­in the re­gion is key to im­prov­ing the re­silience and re­li­able of In­ter­net ser­vices to cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es, he said, adding that build­ing and ed­u­cat­ing the re­gion­al tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty is a vi­tal com­po­nent in pro­tect­ing against cy­ber­at­tacks.

Wood­cock com­mend­ed the work of the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group (CaribNOG) and the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union in cre­at­ing greater aware­ness about cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty is­sues across the re­gion.

"Threat de­tec­tion and re­sponse has been a chal­lenge for gov­ern­ments and pri­vate sec­tor for years," said Stephen Lee, CEO of ArkiTechs Inc and a cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert at CaribNOG. "Hav­ing a re­gion-wide com­mu­ni­ty com­mit­ted to de­fend­ing net­works at the lo­cal and re­gion­al lev­el makes a huge dif­fer­ence to min­imis­ing the hav­oc hack­ers can wreak."

The vol­un­teer-based CaribNOG group has staged a se­ries of work­shops and pub­lic aware­ness events to help or­gan­i­sa­tions and net­work ad­min­is­tra­tors across the re­gion tack­le the in­creas­ing bar­rage of cy­berthreats and at­tacks.

Coun­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­sourced con­strained de­vel­op­ing re­gions, are on­ly just be­gin­ning to un­der­stand the com­plex, cross-bor­der na­ture of the chal­lenge be­ing faced, and the dam­ag­ing con­se­quences, Wood­cock ex­plained.

"As gov­ern­ment net­works, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and even small busi­ness come un­der at­tack, the ur­gency to train per­son­nel, strength­en com­put­er sys­tems and up­date an­ti­quat­ed laws and pol­i­cy is be­com­ing ap­par­ent," said Wood­cock.

"Pub­lic-good, tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ties like CaribNOG, and oth­er Net­work Op­er­a­tors group around the world play an im­por­tant role in im­ple­ment­ing so­lu­tions and safe­guards to pro­tect the In­ter­net."