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Central Government, Government Security, Policy

IMPACT boss warns of long struggle with cyber crime

By Robin Hicks | 14 October 2009

Datuk Mohd Noor Amin, the Chairman of the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats, or IMPACT, has warned governments of the “long-term struggle” with cyber criminality and the need for international cooperation to fight it.

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More states should look to set up dedicated agencies to mitigate the “growing dangers” of cyber threats, he said, and more should be done by governments to ensure that individual agencies “talk to one another” about cyber crime issues, including cyber warfare and cyber terrorism.

Datuk Amin praised Singapore, South Korea, Abu Dhabi and the United Kingdom for recently taking action to secure their cyber defences.

IMPACT was formed less than a year ago, and now counts 191 countries as member states, as well as partners in academia and the vendor community. The organisation also serves as the United Nations global cyber security unit.

Datuk Amin said that while it was not yet in IMPACT’s charter to solve disputes between countries engaged in cyber warfare, he did not discount the possibility of being “an arbiter” during cyber conflicts in the future.

“We are not in the business of attributing blame. We’re about solving immediate crises and helping governments in need,” he explained.

When asked how internal conflicts between IMPACT member countries would be resolved, Datuk Amin said that they would “have to learn to live with one another.”

He added that while member countries were encouraged to share information on how to tackle cyber threats, they were under no obligation to “share everything – this is unrealistic.”

Eugene Kaspersky, the CEO and Founder of Kaspersky Lab, a information security firm and a member of IMPACT’s International Advisory Board, echoed Amin’s views, saying that the distributed denial-of-service attacks on Estonia, Russia, the CIA and the Marshall Islands in recent years were “just the beginning” of the era of cyber warfare.

“A new age of cyber terrorism is a very real possibility,” said Kaspersky, who suggested that an internet police force be set up to counter it. He also suggested that, now that there are one billion citizens online, why not establish an internet government to which netizens pay taxes to help fund cyber security measures.

Kaspersky added that the evolution of computing systems has made it easy for cyber criminals to operate. “Most of the world’s operating systems and devices are flexible but insecure,” he said. “It is the customers who determine the nature of an operating system, and they have chosen flexibility over security,” he said. “This makes it very easy for cyber criminals.

He also warned of the security risks posed by the rise of the smart phone, for which effective security systems have yet to be developed. “Ten years from now mobile security will be as big an issue as PC security,” he said.