Cyber Terrorism – A Clear and Present Danger

Depending upon the industry, cyber terrorism may hold different meanings. Cyber terrorism may involve a political element, be strictly a financial crime, be a motivationally focused attack, or be leveraged for other, unknown purposes. Cyber terrorism may also be used to create fear or confusion, and not necessarily a loss of atoms or bits. Cyber terrorism can affect any business or industry. Just because you don’t have something highly secretive, you may be impacted simply because someone has a beef against your brand or your industry.

One concern is that cyber terrorism is used as a diversionary tactic for other, more impactful cyber crime. Financial services organizations, for example, experience big DDoS attacks that are used to cover fraud going on in some other channel.

Because cyber terrorism may be used to create confusion in the marketplace for one’s brand or loss of trust for the data that one’s customers are accessing, security professionals are stepping up to educate the organization as to the impact of cyber terrorism to both the business and the industry. In addition to sharing information about industry activity with one’s personal network, industries consortiums are helpful in taking a stand against cyber terrorism. A best practice in dealing with cyber terrorism and denial of service attacks is to establish a “play book” as part of an incident response and business continuity plan.