Collective Cyber Defence

Collective Cyber Defence - A State and Industry Perspective.

Notes on Professor Dr. Marco Gercke, Director of the CyberCrime Research Institute

by Paul Fischer

under international criminal law

Misconception no prosecution occurs

Critical standpoint against int. Law

e.g. drone attacks

Currently unprotected, they will be. /

Is a cyber attack an act of war?

The cyber world has changed dramatically

No longer the sole domain of the military and other government organizations

It will be prosecuted as a matter of criminality

We are creating our own weapons as governments which will not be able to be once they retire or leave gov. Service

NATO independent states, instead of working on our own in the cyber world we work together, this can be difficult, there is an idea we can learn from.

Now it is time to think like a criminal

They are sharing knowledge free of charge, about cybersecurity attacks

Tools are also being distributed free of charge. Only the developers need to be smart, many criminals simply hit a button.

What is shared among states and industries is very limited.

CIO in an example refused to share information about another company at first even when one was contracted by both companies.

dist. Or otherwise for virus distribution, is a serious crime, but no one reports this, as a company. The state is unable to do anything about it, and may harm the image of the company if made public

This changed two years ago, and big companies began to stand up and say, we have a problem, we have been hacked.

States still do not engage in this behavior.

We are blind until you don’t report it, forcing people, to report, is coming up in Brussels and in Washington, under the Obama administration.

2 ways, report analysis and big data

The question arises about what to do with big data.

The state still does not have the power to protect, so the big data would need to shared with industries powerful enough to offer protection.

Necessity to discuss and to exchange information in the same way the criminals currently are.

Discussion of realtime exchange about attacks.

Prioritization of data sharing, this could be real.

The next step is making sure the companies work together in the defensive

Not every company could build the cyber machine for defense, opinion that cloud computing creates a big problem. The Patriot Act as an example that gives certain government agencies access to the data on your servers where otherwise it would not have that data.

In the industry there is a discussion to reduce the military expenditure but to pool resources more effectively

Let’s apply this to the states as well. Borders and infrastructure may be protectable by states, but the people cannot be protected in cyberspace by the state alone.

Change is the only constant we have, but more corporation is expected.

Transparency can be tough…

… governments are realizing that information will anyway leak, but it is better to have a straightforward process by which that information is disseminated.

Beyond NATO more states are more concerned about sharing standards and technology. States are not yet ready to talk the same language in strategies. We need to carefully move in this direction.

German membership to a convention changed the meaning of the international convention entirely. Translation issues and technological obsoletion created negative outcomes.

We should not stop. The development of a 3D printer is a beautiful thing, but it has been used to print guns and other thiings. That does not mean development should have been impeded.