Cyber Attack Alarm Bells Fatigue

The sheer number of messages I see daily warning of another cyber-attack, threat, breach, CVE, threat actor, APT, etc. is overwhelming. I don’t know what others are doing with this deluge of messages and articles, but I’ve become dulled to this stream of repetitive information. Oh, another cyber-attack has been reported. Oh, look another app store app is stealing data. Yawn….

I’m not sure all of this reporting about cyber incidents is really helping us address the root cause of these problems. Will 2023 be another year of daily reporting of cyber incidents, with no real movement toward solutions to the underlying causes of these cyber-events? How are all of these reports of cyber-events/incidents helping make us more secure? I’m wondering if people are just becoming apathetic to these reports of cyber risk and accept it as just another risk related to the human condition, like the risk of getting a cold or the flu.

I don’t have an answer. But I do see the problem. Cyber-incidents will continue to rise because it’s a lucrative business for cyber-criminals. That’s a fact. Are we just going to be content listening to the alarm bells or are we are going to do something to address the root cause of these alarm bells? And these alarm bells are not limited to cybersecurity events. Physical damage to substations by vandals and winter storms Elliott and Uri served a dose of reality that we will not soon forget. Our energy infrastructure is vulnerable and brittle and our dependence on this brittle infrastructure is leaving us exposed to real harm.

My hope for the New Year is that society spends more time working on solutions to the underlying problems that we are already well aware of and less time dealing with the deafening alarm bells that only serve to remind us of the dire situation we find ourselves. It’s time to put our energies toward finding solutions to these problems, and that requires teamwork.

Happy and Healthy New Year to all