Waiting for the National Cyber Bureau to act

A cyberattack can cripple an entire nation; that much, we already know. The practice of e-government makes the state more vulnerable to cyberattacks; downing a bank's website can interfere with the financial market and infecting a popular news website with a Trojan horse can affect all of its readers' computers, mirror passwords and conduct industrial espionage.

It is hard to gauge the scope of the cyberattack planned for April 7, but we already know that dozens, if not hundreds of hackers will take part in the coordinated assault, orchestrated by Anonymous. Those hackers will undoubtedly employ tens of thousands of computerized robots that will try simultaneously to disrupt Israel's Internet.

This problem has to be addressed, and not by putting up more and more firewalls. Gearing for a cyberattack does little to prevent one, and taking computerized systems offline implies helplessness.

We also have to be able to tell cyberattacks apart from information security threats, since each requires different protection. In a country like Israel, where the Internet is a highly sensitive nerve, this threat has to be properly assessed, analyzed and thwarted. Cyber protection has to be comprehensive on every level and risk assessment should be conducted for every source code, domain and application, to ensure they meet the various security challenges they face. There is no shame in admitting when we are wrong.

Unfortunately, the Israel National Cyber Bureau has been virtually silent on the matter so far, and has yet to assume a significant role in better educating the public on the nature of cyber threats.

We know that the National Cyber Bureau exists and we know that it employs an elite force that oversees operations whose details best remain under wraps. We can probably rely on them, but there is no such thing as total security.

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