Are we in love with cyber insecurity?

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Why are we so much in love with cyber insecurity?

First of all, we like progress and, therefore, we cannot get enough of the new functionality that information and communications technologies bring us. We love the ease of use. And we absolutely adore new gadgets. More cyber security hinders all these things. Information Security? It is a department at headquarters, is it not?

Second, designers and software developers of new information and communications technologies – think tablets, smart watches, Google Glasses – do not look backwards as they

Are we ready for the next wave of cyber insecurities?

Innovative functionalities empowered by information and communications technologies are rapidly being embedded in the critical infrastructures and, indeed, in all the veins and capillaries of modern society. We are taking about smart refrigerators and washing machines, smart cars, smart grids, even smart cities.

But we have not been so smart because we have not learned from and applied the cyber security lessons identified in the past. We can, therefore, expect major disruptions of our smart

Is there a way out?

Yes, but it will take time.

We must collect and codify all the cyber insecurity lessons learned in the past and perform root cause analyses. We must convert these lessons to cyber security engineering principles, cyber security architectural design principles, and good and best practice approaches. We must understand and apply (cyber security) safety factors such as defense-in-depth just as rigorously as structural engineers and nuclear engineers use theirs. We must transform the art of

Eric Luiijf, a former officer in the Royal Netherlands Navy, is a Principal Consultant for Cyber Operations and Critical (Information) Infrastructure Protection at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO, The Hague, The Netherlands. Mr. Luiijf has served as a process control system and smart grid security expert for the former Dutch Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI.NL). Currently, Mr. Luiijf supports, among others, the Dutch Ministries of Security

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Eric Luiijf, a former officer in the Royal Netherlands Navy, is a Principal Consultant for Cyber Operations and Critical (Information) Infrastructure Protection at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO, The Hague, The Netherlands. Mr. Luiijf has served as a process control system and smart grid security expert for the former Dutch Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI.NL). Currently, Mr. Luiijf supports, among others, the Dutch Ministries of Security and Justice, and Defence, as well as European Union projects in the areas of cyber operations and critical infrastructure protection.

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