Cyber Risks in a “Connected World” can take human lives and cause physical damage

I believe that the cyber risks are always grossly underestimated or trivialized. Over the last few years due to the rapid digitization of businesses, there has been a growing spate of cyber-attacks the world over. New start-ups offer a panacea of digitized solutions through cloud platforms. With limited budgets and a focus on perfecting their business model, companies need to navigate the tradeoff between the portions of their financial capital that goes into product security as against growing the business.

The next phase of digital evolution is themed “connected” – connected cars, connected homes, and connected humans (with intelligent body parts like wireless enabled pacemakers). As businesses race to bring new connected products or to make intelligent existing products using internet enabled sensors, wireless, cloud management and mobile apps, they still seem to not realize the criticality of fool proofing these systems against cyber threats.

The risks have now extended beyond purely financial and reputation losses to threats which affect human lives.  As the world digitizes, cyber threats that damage property, cause physical harm and even kill will materialize at a scale that is virtually impossible to contain.

An early indication is the recent recall of 1.4m vehicles by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the world's seventh largest automaker, to fix a vulnerability that allowed hackers to use the cellular network to electronically control vital functions. Functions, which when manipulated could shut the engine down while it was being driven down the highway, take control of the steering wheel and disable the brakes. Similar threats would materialize if hackers were able to find flaws in a wireless pacemakers or other such devices.

The core issue is twofold. Firstly as the connected world becomes individualized,  malicious hackers would find and exploit flaws in products used by individuals or organizations they target. Remotely engineered assassinations may just become a reality.

The second and more dangerous consequence, is of terrorist organizations utilizing vulnerabilities that affect products used by many, cars for example, to launch mass attacks which would instantly cause more damage and widespread chaos, than detonating explosives. Such remote attacks from the Internet will bypass all conventional border security measures.

In a digitized world, cybersecurity and safety become intrinsically linked and as new standards slowly evolve, an immediate concerted attempt must be made by companies to build secure products to protect naïve cyber citizens against all sort of risks.

For a cybercitizen, security should be under the hood, so as to speak. Cybercitizens are unable to determine the extent to which these products are safe to use. Besides building safe products, systems to securely and instantly plug vulnerabilities will need to be perfected.