A Futuristic Review of Cyber Defence

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Cyber age has begun in the previous century and includes everything related to the web, computers and mobile technologies. As cyberspace has been developing, some security concerns have appeared. The future of computing technologies is clear – we are going quantum. But, how would be the future of cyber defence? Let’s say, we will get all those ultra fast, quantum-based computers in the coming decades, but how would we make them be a secure place for us? There is a lot of theories, but we will present you only some of them. So, let’s start our overview.

Whatever Your Cyber Defence is, Make it a Good One

Today’s cyber environment is very often harmful due to a lot of threats, risks and attacks that may occur there. What we have in mind first, when we say a cyber threat, are some sorts of criminal and terrorist groups. All they normally communicate with each other through the web. But, what is quite interesting, it’s pretty difficult to break into their communication. Why is that a case?

The answer to this question is so simple. They use a Darknet or a Deep Web to share the information, ideas and content with each other. So, what would be a Deep Web? The Deep Web is the part of the Internet that is usually invisible for regular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and so on. These search tools simply cannot index those fragments of cyberspace. That means all the communications, sharing and activities stay undetected using a normal mean of communication break ins. Luckily, there are special tools that may allow you to see what is going on under the surface. That’s what the law enforcement institutions use nowadays to gather evidence regarding these sorts of crime.

A good defence usually include a good understanding of threats. For that reason, it is vitally important to gather as much information as you can about your harmful opponent and to understand those information at both – tactical and strategic level. An appropriate tactic normally involve identifying and linking the actors of the criminal situation, while a strategy goes below the surface and must see a background of such a situation. Only with both components included, your defence can be a good one.

Do not Forget to be Aware of a Situation

A good problem management requires a good understanding of a situation that happens. Many researchers believe that a situational awareness is the art we need so much in security nowadays. The situational awareness has 3 phases in its data gathering and analysis process. These are (1) perception, (2) interpretation and (3) prediction. Let us explain these better.

The first step in a situation awareness methodology is perception. This step includes identifying and gathering the information regarding a case that has been investigated. The accuracy of such a obtained information can seriously affect the next two steps. Sometimes it’s quite complicated and time consuming to gather precise information due to disturbing environmental conditions. For that reason, it’s very important to have experienced and trained people who would be capable to deal with these.

Once the information have been gathered, you should start with their analysis or interpretation. This phase require very skilled staffs who are able to see the meaning of and also the links between such a collected information.

Finally, the last step here would be a prediction. It’s a quite strategic part of the task and strongly depends on how successful the previous two steps have been resolved. The prediction allows us to see the causes and effects of the situation and also understand the trends that may occur in the future.

Quantum Computing Seeks Quantum Encryption

From today’s perspective, our future seems as very quantum. At the moment, many scientists in the world are trying to build up the first quantum computers ever. There are many theories and research that suggest it’s feasible to make such a great innovation.

So, if a quantum computing is getting our reality of at least something that will become a part of our lives in the coming decades, does that mean our security will also follow this trend and become quantum as well? Experts say – Yes! We will be able to do a very powerful encryption at quantum level. In other words, it will be possible to encrypt the smallest pieces of the particle. Sounds like we will be in position to encrypt a nature itself. Well, that’s exactly what the current stage of the human’s development suggests.

The Future Relies on Intelligence

In the previous articles here, we were discussing how the future of cyber security could look like. What we see as crucially important at this stage are intelligence led or intelligence driven systems. Many researchers predict that such an intelligence-based concept should find its place in a software engineering and computer science world. There are indications that a software of the future would be capable to provide an active self-defence. As it is known, a defence, in its essence, is about a risk management. So, it’s not that hard to imagine a cyber solution of the future which will rely on intelligence and be able to protect itself.

Reference:

[1] 2014 Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (iOCTA), The European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) at Europol, 2014