What are some of the top cybersecurity issues affecting the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) today, and what are leaders across DoD, the IC, academia, and industry doing to address those issues? Welcome to Defense TechCast, a new monthly webcast brought to you by ClearanceJobs and with host Leslie Weinstein, a cyber expert and U.S. Army major. In this month’s episode, Weinstein chats with Peter Segal, Director, Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program, Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of a recent paper, Confronting Reality in Cyberspace: Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet.
Discussing cybersecurity topics today involves an understanding of how the internet is used differently across countries and threat landscapes. The U.S. model of being able to open a web browser and have a virtual world at your fingertips is not necessarily the reality confronting other countries, or other technical frameworks.
“The internet from the beginning has been slightly fragmented,” said Segal. China and Iran have always kept some segments of the internet away from their populations, he noted. The internet can be open, fragmented or controlled depending upon the country, the content controls, and also the technical frameworks involved. “Lots of countries are controlling the content, controlling the internet,” Segal noted.
“The U.S. had the most open internet on the content side,” said Segal. That’s thanks to the U.S. Constitution and U.S. views on the need for open dissemination of information – a view not even shared across European nations.
“Russia is a tsunami, and China is climate change”
Cybersecurity threats are certainly increasing, along with more thought to supply chain security and data protection. The sources of those growing attacks is also growing, from ransomware perpetuated by private criminal organizations that more resemble a ‘Geek Squad’ than a smash and grab criminal. That doesn’t mean that nation states – along with the U.S. – aren’t in play. But the good news is there does seem to be a threshold that deters major nation state actors.
“The Russians and the Chinese do seem to be deterred [against] destructive cyber attacks,” like those attacking critical infrastructure or with clear implications for escalation. That means the majority of attacks – and those attacks are manifold, are taking place ‘below the threshold.’ That means government and industry are working to reduce those attacks with an aggressive defense posture.
The posture has become ‘defending forward or hunting forward,’ Segal emphasized, “taking a more offensive view of defense, and preventing the hackers before they ever get to U.S. networks.”
Just as the threats are multi-pronged and facilitated through multiple actors and nation states, the cybersecurity posture is a multi-layered approach – considering not just technology, but foreign policy and human intelligence.
“Disruption, defense, trying to shape the international environment by setting the rules of the road and norms of behavior” – those are the critical aspects of confronting cybersecurity within today’s fragmented internet.
Defining the terms:
Fragmented Internet: The idea that the internet is split into fragmented cyberspace segments – or the fear that the internet is in danger of being split up into fragmented spaces.
Ransomware: A form of malware that locks a user out of their systems or devices, then demands a payment to restore access.
Encryption: The method by which information is converted into a code or form that hides the information’s true meaning.
Doxing: Publishing private information on the internet, typically with malicious intent.
