was at least partly caused by the Internet…specifically, by the massive amounts of data the Internet can generate. British central banker Andrew Haldane and leading British zoologist Robert May, in an article published in Nature’s January 2011 issue, claim that extraordinarily complicated financial engineering created an “ecosystem” that was designed to maximize profits for individual participants, but created vast systemic risk for the market as a whole.
Advanced derivatives and nanosecond trading systems are complex and sophisticated – but that doesn’t mean they’re secure or “robust.” Compared to most creatures out there, we humans are complicated beings with great gains in brainpower…but we can be struck down by a single primitive organism. Complexity means both power and weakness. So as our Internet-based systems become more complex, our safeguards must evolve as well, which requires greater and greater outlays of time, brainpower, and money.
And our cyber systems are not yet ready to deal with the complexity of the data we generate. Last February, a leading genomics researcher predicted in the journal Science that the massive amounts of data being generated from DNA analysis “will swamp our storage systems and crush our computer clusters.” Our analysis and control capabilities are trailing our data creation by a wide margin.
Nowhere is this more disturbing than in the field of cyber security. Cyber defense is the newest arena of asymmetric warfare, leveling the playing field for smaller, poorer countries – or even individuals – that want to take a run at the major nations. Ten well-trained computer hackers can now accomplish more damage than an armored battalion, at one-millionth of the expense…and anonymously. The US (probably) turned this fact to its own advantage when it unleashed the Stuxnet computer worm on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But China has been cognizant of this reality for years, and Chinese hackers are suspected to be the force behind dozens of finished and ongoing attacks, from the CodeRed worm to ongoing cyber-espionage against the US military and other American interests. If these attacks evolve from espionage and vandalism to something greater, they have the potential to truly unleash Armageddon. The US military relies on its superior command and control functions, which are primary cybernetic. If those systems were breached, how long could the DoD maintain security?
Espionage protection, communications security, infrastructure defense – with so much at stake, both corporate and government spending on cyber space will rise. Below you’ll find several companies that are ready to take advantage of the new emphasis on cyber security and the Internet.
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