The increasing virtual infrastructures that governments and the private sector rely on grow day by day. What once was merely a way of communication, virtual networking has now become the popular way of storing sensitive data as well as relaying information within a country.
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But with the increased dependency on networks and servers for communication come the cyber-threats that, if successful, may cause devastation effects upon a country and its functioning branches. Cyber security measures are expected to increase online security that faces continuing challenges of being compromised. In particular, Special Forces, whom rely heavily on anonymous networking are now facing higher risks of having their security breached.
The US Special Forces may face attacks that intentionally target their operations through insider attacks, heists, advanced persistent threats, and malicious hardware. These cyber-threats are designed to cause harm to operations and networks that may lead to severe damages to personnel, as well as the virtual infrastructure. Such compromising may derive from several factors like lack of talent, source-identification difficulties, and rapid pace of change.
–Shortage of talent may come from the lack of personnel that are knowledgeable in intelligence analysis or data mining and in some cases these specialists are rather found through the private sector.
-Difficulties in identifying the source of attack are by default one of the many problems when facing cyber-security threats. The source is not easily identifiable and it usually takes time to understand where a threat is coming from. Attacks may come from cyber gangs as well as other countries.
-The increasing pace of change means that cyber-threats are evolving every day and are becoming more sophisticated and less vulnerable to current defenses.
In order for the Special Forces to be prepared against cyber-attacks, a Cyber Threat Assessment Template is developed to mitigate cyber-threats. This strategy must involve protection of national interests as well as meet attacks face to face. An effective strategy would be for all US forces to gather Intel regarding potential attacks by understanding cyber-threats coming from different countries and regions. This would also result in severe changes to the methodology of how the Special Forces go about conducting operations and ways that they must fore go in how their networking systems operate.
The Security Policy against adversaries
A security policy has been developed in order to successfully implement the fore mentioned template regarding security threats. This policy must follow certain measures whose effect empowers offensive strategies used against cyber-threats and cyber-criminals.
This includes:
- Proactively protecting sensitive information
- Sharing of data anonymously
- DoD network monitoring
- Ensure compliance against insider threats
Proactively Protecting Sensitive Information
This method focuses more on action against threats rather than reacting after the threats take place. By safeguarding infrastructure and data, the government can address vulnerabilities that come from the private supplier. The Special Forces may also implement data-centric security to increase protection of sensitive data from attackers.
Sharing of Data Anonymously
Using anonymous data can be a good way of reducing risk of data disclosure and also reduce the chances that a cyber-gang will target certain parts of a network: by rendering certain data anonymous for external use, such data will not be as valuable when its source is anonymous.
DoD Network Monitoring
Special Forces are responsible for defending the Department of Defense networks as well, and the increasing use of virtualized space and cloud technologies means that one vulnerable endpoint in the cloud can lead to the tearing down of the system as a whole. This can be mitigated by proactively monitoring anomalies in order to actively stop threats when it is needed.
Ensuring Compliance against Insider Threats
Insider threats remain one of the biggest risks of cyber security. These risks come when a person has authorized access to resources, information, and network systems, and uses them to harm the organization from inside out. The reason these kinds of attacks remain the most dangerous is because they are hard to mitigate as well as defend against, providing the insider with opportunities to plant boots and Trojans and continually leak information as well as create access points for intruders. Through proactive compliance and threat detection, these threats should be identified before they mature into a full-scale attack against the network.
Conclusion
Cyber Threat Assessment is a necessary tool against cyber-threats that also helps develop a certain mindset against such attacks. While cyber security tools are a necessary need in defending against threats, they are harder to apply in large-scale security risks. Fellow readers should not be discouraged by used terms in our cyber security articles but instead should attempt to learn more about such terminology through cyber security courses. Keep in mind that these courses might go a long way in the ever-changing cyber world.
