Yesterday evening I had the pleasure to be at a seminar organized by SWISSNEX China and HEC Lausanne to welcome Professor Solange GHERNAOUTI to a conference on cybersecurity.
Solange is a remarkable professor who open the Swiss Cybersecurity Advisory and Research Group at HEC Lausanne many years before! She's also the founding partner of HEPTAGONE, a digital risk management & security agency.
However, to fully understand her amazing accomplishments, you need to go on Wikipedia otherwise I will have to write an entire article about her!
A Cybercrime definition is a crime (financial fraud, harassment, theft, ID usurpation, ...) performed in the Cyberspace (mostly we are talking about internet but not only) BUT with real victims and benefit!
The virtual Cyberspace is now so real and connected to our lives than it is even called the 5th battlefield by the U.S army (after land, water, air & space).
Thereafter she, step-by-step, described why the Cybercrimes will not stop, evolve in complexity as well as frequency and the damage will be more and more serious.
We already know that states, corporation and individuals are at stake here because Solange and me are both Cyber Security professionals. What was truly interesting is how she explained to non-professionals attendees all the relations.
During the round table for questions and answers it was really interesting to see how people were "shocked" after discovering this situation and our actual context. I will never forget the reaction of one of them that was truly hysterical...
In conclusion, Solange said that the equation to stop (let's more reasonably say decrease) Cybercrimes is the following formula:
Cyber Security (Technology improvement + Management awareness)
+
Legislation (Cyber security law + National & international law enforcement)
=
REAL IMPACT ON CYBERCRIMES
For me, undoubtedly, Solange is 100% right. However, I would add some comments on this. First, if you compare Cyberspace to a car, Cybercrime to Road crime and Cyber security to car security what do you have?
You will get our situation today with law and enforcement, advanced technologies in car (seatbelts, ABS, EPS, Airbag, speed regulator, GPS, ...) still we do have dead and road crimes, why?
For the simple reason than no technologies, nor software, nor anything else can protect you from the human minds! As long as people want to do crime they will... As long as people are not educated they will continue to take risks.
When you are on internet you are the one who spread your information without precaution, you can be the one "peeping" your neighbor on Facebook or tracking your son' phone...
I do believe that Cybercrime can only be stopped by educating people about security and how dangerous it can be! Of course this should be done in addition of everything previously mentioned but it is the most important part. Thereafter, you will still have Cybercrimes but people would not be able to hide behind "I didn't knew...".
Anyway, it is impossible for me to explain the full pictures in this article but I highly suggest everyone to read Solange' book Cyber Power: Crime, Conflict and Security in Cyberspace.
The book is in English (it may exist a French version...) and will be also in Chinese by the end of the year!
It is a must-read such as "IT Security awareness training". Please quit reading my article and go buy this book ;-)
You are still here? Ok, then I also suggest one of my personal favorite book on this topic (quite famous) called Future crimesby Marc GOODMAN
Now you have no more excuses, I warned you enough!
Original post: Cybersecurity: stakes and challenges from strategic, operational and business perspectives