Summary

Like homeland security, the cybersecurity concern arose out of the 1995 Tokyo Subway Attacks. A 1997 Presidential report commissioned to examine the vulnerability of US critical infrastructure noted that it was becoming increasingly reliant on computer controls that might one day become targets of attack, making infrastructure indeed more vulnerable. The worst-case scenarios from cyber-attack are 1) Shutting down the North American grid, 2) Instigating nuclear meltdowns, and 3) Undermining the Federal Reserve. Either one of these scenarios could result in deaths and damages unseen since the Civil War, the worst disaster in US history. To be sure, the cyber threat grew as the Internet grew, starting about the Third Epoch in 1995 when the introduction of the worldwide web saw the Internet balloon from 16 million to 4 billion users. From the start we knew the Internet was imperfect, but we embraced it despite its flaws because it made everything better, faster, cheaper. Now, so many necessities of urban life depend upon the Internet that there’s no way of going back to without it. So why is it so vulnerable? Two reasons: 1) all software is flawed, and 2) all humans are fallible. As a result, hackers are constantly searching for new software flaws they can exploit, or if that proves too difficult, trying to trick users into releasing their legitimate access codes through phishing attacks. Unfortunately, none of these problems is fixable with current technology, nor are there any solutions in the foreseeable future. In the absence of a cure for cyber-attack, the nation must maintain continual vigilance to protect against new exploits and incessant phishing attacks. Cybersecurity, though, is a team sport. It takes an entire village to maintain effective cybersecurity. Unfortunately, it only takes one village idiot to destroy it.