Devost.Net Information

Devost, who has been researching the impact of information technology on national security since 1993, provides strategic consulting services to foreign governments and corporations, advising on counterterrorism, information warfare, critical infrastructure protection and homeland security. In his March 25 lecture at the Tokyo American Center, Devost repeatedly warned that computer systems are "inherently vulnerable" and continually under the threat of an attack, noting that terrorist organizations could be secretly preparing for an attack even now. Devost categorized the types of threats from the smallest to the biggest, according to whom the threat came from: unstructured hackers, structured hackers, so-called hacktivists who are traditional activists protesting a particular policy or action by using hacking techniques, industrial spies, single-issue terrorists, international terrorists and nation-states that are "engaged in looking at potentially using cyber attacks as a mechanism of information warfare." He said he would classify the defacing of Web sites that has occurred since the start of the war in Iraq as mischievous criminal activity, not cyberterrorism, because such acts do not meet the cyberterrorism criteria of having a political or coercive impact on society. To counter cyber attacks, society should have a strong research community engaged in independent testing of software and hardware that society is reliant on as critical infrastructure, Devost said. He continued, "If we don't do that, we'll leave ourselves open to those vulnerabilities being exploited by somebody else." According to Devost, finding the balance between the benefits of utilizing the digital infrastructure and spending on eliminating vulnerability is possible through proper risk management. "It's a matter of finding the balance of risk in the organization based upon the realistic assessment of your own vulnerabilities," he said. "It's more cost-effective to have that type of approach-measured holistic approach-than to have ...