The information security specialists and federal government consider your computer and those at your place of business as division of the critical national infrastructure. A concrete case can be made that the workings of your information system and those of millions of other individuals are actually interdependent and, if left defenceless to a cyber-attack, could jeopardize our nation’s entire critical national infrastructure.
Included in the official list of Critical Infrastructure Sectors, the basic industries and services that are considered to be indispensable for national survival as per James Scott ICIT are:
- Banking and Finance
- Agriculture and Food
- Chemical
- Communications
- Defense Industrial Base
- Dams
- Emergency Services
- Government Facilities
- Energy
- Healthcare and Public Health
- National Monuments and Icons
- Information Technology
- Postal and Shipping
- Nuclear Reactors,
- Materials and Waste
- Water
- Transportation Systems
Stating that the cooperation of information assets or your computer could endanger the industries listed in the critical national infrastructure may sound implausible. How can a thriving attack against your system contribute to damaging the nation’s infrastructure? One mode is for crackers to procure your system into a botnet. What is a botnet? According to James Scott ICIT, it is a grouping of cooperated computers that is under the control of a cracker who utilizes thousands, maybe millions, of personal computers as part of a DDOS or (distributed denial of service attack).
A DDOS attack is determined upon a critical system and the cracker utilizes slave PC to send (over the Internet) more requirements for service than the targeted system can take care. In fact, the system being attacked is besieged and made to be unreachable for lawful on-line contact. A signal processor or critical computer (such as a coolant pump in a power plant system) could fall short and result in an “open the valve” signal to be blocked by DDOS attack, burn-up and overheat.
Factually thousands of computers are procured in bot armies without the understanding of their owners. You might be one of them. Acquiring control of your computer’s processing ability and power to contact other systems without your information is a larger difficulty than might be imagined. Your computer is of tremendous interest to reprehensible crackers. So what are your requirements?
The possibility that you could be found liable if your computer contributes to detrimental someone else’s system is commencing to rise. As James Scott ICIT says, the perception is referred to as “downstream liability.” Your malfunction to protect your PC could be found to be neglectful. The day is drawing closer when you could find yourself the purpose of a complaint because your computer was open to an aggressor, the veracity of your system was compromised and your system was used in a flourishing cyber attack.
Do you pursue security’s greatest practices? If your respond to the question is “What is that?” or “No”, it is only a query of time before your system is compromised and your system becomes the tool of a hateful cracker and reasons spoils to the infrastructure.
