Threats of nation-state

Nation-state threats are related to attacks on the infrastructure, military and businesses. It can be difficult to identify the perpetrators as they wish to go undetected and will always shift the blame to independent cyber gangs, foreign entities or hacktivists.

Today, organizations have to contend with not only sophisticated cyberattacks that are motivated by financial gain, but also nation-states and cause-based actors that have broader goals.

A report says, 91% of all cyberattacks begin with a phishing email, and phishing techniques are involved in 32% of all successful data breaches. These nation-state actors develop exploits that target the Internet and critical services infrastructure of other nations.

Beyond geopolitical conflicts, they often attack both government and private-sector online resources as a means to destabilization. Hence, organizations must develop security practices that support proactive and continuous cybersecurity to build up resilient defences against them.

In this battle, modernization of IT and the growing digitalization of business will also see a greater application of artificial intelligence toward optimizing software and solutions that deliver proactive security. This rides on AI’s value to the business and security, which is centered on recognizing patterns and relationships that produce actionable insights and executing hundreds of “what if” scenarios to produce a better understanding of the complex relationship between multiple variables.

For the uninitiated, state-sponsored attacks are carried out by hackers linked to a nation (state). The primary goal of these hackers is to identify and exploit the national infrastructure vulnerability, gather intelligence, and exploit systems.

Nation-state attacks are usually thought of as highly complex technology-based hacks. But they can also be far more simple in design. Technology might not even be involved. In fact, social engineering is a common method used to breach business systems.

Social engineering takes advantage of human vulnerabilities, convincing people within an organization to click bogus links and download malware which invariably leads to security breaches. Defending against nation-state attacks will require careful assessment and enhancement of your current cybersecurity protections, including your people, processes, and technology, to understand your capabilities and implement further safeguards as necessary.

S Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA