A report by Sky News has revealed that the MoD and its partners failed to protect military and defence data in 37 incidents in 2017. In light of this news, please see a comment from Jake Moore, cyber security expert at ESET UK, on what this means for national security and how future incidents can be avoided.
Jake Moore, Cyber Security Expert at ESET UK:
“The theft of any secret information is a serious threat to a business but when the stolen data includes military secrets it quickly ramps up to become a serious threat to national security. Disclosure of such sensitive information to enemy eyes naturally increases the risk of a potential cyber-attack on their IT infrastructure and networks. Lessons will hopefully be learnt from this particular attack, as in some cases the report suggests computers were not even checked for malware. Ultimately, with such force it is difficult to defend from a constant flow of attacks but in simple terms this sort of breach should not be occurring in these numbers on secret documents in 2018. Human error still occurs and this report simply echoes that you can have endless computing power and other unmanned mitigation techniques in place, yet the human firewall can still easily be a target and let these attacks in. Such prevention techniques as robust and effective staff training will no doubt reduce the number of reported attacks on the MoD.”
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