Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently raised the issue of cyber security education during a Washington D.C. speech. The intention behind such a sentiment is a good one. Teaching cyber security to the public, and making it a part of the education curriculum is essentially a public safety lesson akin to ‘Don’t Do Drugs,’ ‘Don’t Talk To Strangers’, and ‘Be Alert And Aware Of Your Surroundings.’
However, as a society we are at a crossroads where our children have vastly more knowledge of the cyber landscape than adults. Teachers still struggle with computer basics while students are hacking the schools’ computer systems to change their grades, create DDoS attacks on the day of critical testing, and worse.
If the Australian government wishes to be effecting in a public safety education campaign around the risks of cyber-attack, they must first both educate and protect themselves from such possibilities. Education must begin internally before it can be successful externally. To do otherwise will feel like whitewash and just invite new hackers to attack the government with more frequency and fervor.
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Here are some layman’s explanations of the various cyber-attacks:
- DDoS: Denial of Service attack. As the prime minister stated, “equivalent to having a bus block a driveway so a car can’t get out, while a hack means someone breaking into a garage and stealing the car.”
- Encrypted Attack: an encrypted attack as a thief posing as a family member breaking into your house and stealing your jewelry
- Ransomware is like having all your data (phone, computer, all your records, everything digital) kidnapped and held for ransom.
- DDoS for Ransom Is when someone tells a business to ‘pay up or else’ we will take your digital presence offline.
- SQL Injection: Like someone breaking into the bank and stealing all its customers’ safe deposit boxes
These are just a few of the ‘new vector’ complex cyber-attack methodologies. Until businesses and Government become fully educated and protect themselves against such attacks then incidents such as the recent Census attack will be all too frequent. To learn more about how to protect yourself, check out our blog “5 Recipes for How to Design a Resilient Cyber-Attack Environment.”
The online Census was an unmitigated disaster. It’s clear the Australian Government is totally unequipped to protect themselves from cyber criminals.
My 12 year old son knows what a DDoS attack is. It’s a shame no one at the Bureau of Statistics does…
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And now it is more relevant than ever. It is necessary to constantly improve in the field of cybersecurity. Today cybersecurity is one of the most important areas in which any government should invest the budget.
Well, until businesses and Government become fully educated and protect themselves against such attacks then incidents such as the recent Census attack will be all too frequent so it should learn about how to protect them.
absolutely agree. Cybersecurity education is necessary now. because we live in an era of technology. Could you share this article on https://pro-papers.com/political-science-writing-service. I will be very thanksful. Indeed, now there is an information war around the world, and in order to prevent data leakage, we must understand what we are dealing with.
I agree… Awareness and Training are the frontline against attacks over phishing. You can have the best of defence systems in place but if your employees are not trained well enough … hackers are just one click away from infiltrating your setup. we put out a great guide for the best practices for prevention against phishing. you can download and share with your team from here – https://www.phishprotection.com/phishing-protection-best-practices-guide/