We all know how frustrating it is when our email goes down, when we can’t get a phone signal, when a website won’t act in the way we want it to. But imagine how much worse it would be if those IT difficulties meant power outages, failures in the food supply chain, the cancellation of life-saving operations…
As our writers highlight, modern life is dependent on highly complex infrastructures – infrastructures that can only function effectively thanks to that global network of interdependent IT systems and telecomms networks otherwise known as cyberspace.
As our reliance on cyberspace has grown so too have the number of people wanting to exploit this dependency. Cyber crime is now considered one of the top four threats to national security; it costs our economy billions of pounds a year; and has a hugely damaging effect on consumer and business confidence.
This is not something that can be tackled by individual organisations, nor by one country alone. This is a major challenge that requires cross-border collaboration between industry, governments and academia – a global partnership for a global challenge.
25 February 2013