This week’s cyberattack against the social media accounts of the U.S. Central Command, which included messages sympathetic to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, may indeed be little more than a “prank” and “vandalism,” as government officials were quick to characterize it. But it came at a very embarrassing moment – just as President Obama was giving a speech on cybersecurity.
Officials insist that nothing serious was compromised. But no matter how deep the attack went, the incident is a wake-up call for a nation that relies so heavily on computers. Recent cyberattacks on private companies demonstrate that digitally dependent Western civilization is in a precarious position and needs to start taking the problem of cyberwarfare much more seriously than it has to date.
It goes almost without saying that cybersecurity is vital for a government that has so many millions to serve, so many dollars to spend, and so many secrets to protect. In 2011, the White House published a policy paper on cybersecurity that essentially labeled cyberattacks as acts of war. “States have an inherent right to self-defense that may be triggered by certain aggressive acts in cyberspace,” the paper stated. “Certain hostile acts conducted through cyberspace could compel actions under the commitments we have with our military treaty partners.”
Cybersecurity matters to the private sector as well. The phrase “information economy” may be a decade-old cliché, but it signifies something real and important. Reliable and accessible digital documentation has not just made modern life easier – it has also created immense wealth and made the modern American economy far more productive than it could be otherwise. If a significant amount of digital documentation were to lose its reliability due to a cyberattack, it would make the financial crisis of 2008 seem mild in comparison. Imagine the catastrophe of discovering your bank account has been cleared out by hackers, then multiply that by billions of daily transactions, and it becomes clear just how much economic destruction and chaos a cyberattack can generate for private business.
America talks a very good game on cybersecurity, but this latest event, as President Obama put it Tuesday, “just goes to show how much more work we need to do.” Lawmakers of both parties must work together on this issue, as complex as it is.
Usually, when politicians denounce partisanship, they’re just upset that everyone else won’t do what they want. This is not one of those times. Cybersecurity should not be a partisan issue, even if the details matter.
Civil liberties advocates are concerned about potentially unlimited sharing of people’s private information with government. Given recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s activities, they are right to be concerned. Companies are fearful of being sued if they share too much information with government in an effort to protect themselves. Somehow, a balance must be struck that allows reasonable defense of the information infrastructure without destroying privacy protections. Modern civilization’s survival might ultimately depend on it.
