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18/02/2018

Security Expert Says US Computer Networks Are 'Exceptionally Vulnerable' To Cyberattacks




Security Expert Says US Computer Networks Are 'Exceptionally Vulnerable' To Cyberattacks
According to the co-founder of the computer security firm CrowdStrike, United States urgently needs to boost and reorganize its defense systems against cyber threats because thee country and its systems are very vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks.
 
A number of American companies have been devastated and suffered significant losses due to a number of recent cyberattacks that include the NotPetya attack that took place in June last year. according to estimates, the losses to American companies due to these cyber attacks amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. On the other hand, government such as the one in China can potentially get access to critical information which could be used for blackmailing those American citizens who are engaged in working with sensitive data by other forms of attacks such as the cybersecurity breach that took place at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 2015.
 
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer at CrowdStrike, said in a television interview said that considering the recent attacks on the government and private computer systems in America, better forms of cyber protection mechanisms and systems be created and implemented by U.S. authorities on an urgent basis.
 
"The U.S. government is actually exceptionally vulnerable," he said.
 
Alperovitch said that irrespective of the "very good" intelligence operations and systems in the U.S., "their procurement process is so archaic that they are not actually able to buy the technologies they need to protect themselves fast enough."
 
However, there are number of other networks that need enhancement and this low cyber security situation is not just the problem of the networks in the U.S. but others are also very vulnerable to cyberattacks. A large number of companies all over the world were adversely affected by two of the most recent attacks - NotPetya and WannaCry.
 
"The U.S. is not great at defense but in my travels overseas I realized that everyone else is even worse. So this is not an area where anyone, including their adversaries, are good," Alperovitch added.
 
There are three things that is suggested by him for companies and company networks to do to prevent such future cyber security issues. The first is to detect the presence of an enemy in about a minute. Companies should also immediately investigate that threat – preferably within a time span of 10 minutes. And lastly, company cybersecurity systems should such invasions should be cleaned up within the hour.
 
"If you are that fast there's not a service in the world that will be able to either destroy your network or actually accomplish the objective of stealing data from you," he said.
 
(Sourcec:www.cnbc.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell

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