Ignatius: Private, business data needs protection, but how?
When the debris settles after special counsel Robert Mueller completes his investigation into Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election, America will still be left with the underlying problem that triggered the probe in the first place: the threat of malicious cyberattacks against political parties, corporations, and anybody else who uses the internet.
Here’s a disturbing fact: Even after all the uproar that has surrounded Mueller’s inquiry, the U.S. government can’t do much to protect most private citizens or organizations against attacks. There’s better security now for election systems and critical infrastructure, but that doesn’t help the banks, hedge funds, law firms and other companies with sensitive data, which are basically on their own.
Mueller’s findings about President Trump will have their own fiery afterlife on Capitol Hill, which nobody can predict. But Congress should also be thinking about the less-sexy fallout from the investigation, which highlighted the vulnerability of all data to foreign spies, meddlers and information pirates.
U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency have already gone on the offensive against Moscow. Last fall, their joint “Russia Small Group” secretly “hacked back,” in effect, against Russia’s Internet Research Agency, briefly shutting down some of its computers. The aim was to deter the Russians from meddling in the 2018 midterm elections, and it seems to have worked.
Private companies are going on the offensive in cyberspace, too, even though the legal terrain is murky and there’s a big risk of triggering a tit-for-tat melee.
-more-
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/ignatius-private-business-data-needs-protection-but-how/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=3a77e4b3af-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-3a77e4b3af-228635337