Former Spy: Spy Agencies Hide Cyber Threats from Public

Former Spy: Spy Agencies Hide Cyber Threats from Public

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8119921_m featureIntelligence agencies are hiding critical information from the public, and private organizations aren’t aware of the true severity of global cyber threats. That’s according to a former top official in one of the Australian intelligence agencies, in an interview given to the Australian Financial Report.

The top official, Ian McKenzie, was until recently the director of the Australian Signals Directorate. The ASD was involved in the large-scale, global American espionage program recently exposed by Edward Snowden: Several documents show how the agency infiltrated foreign networks and tracked mobile devices belonging to Indonesian politicians.

According to McKenzie civilian executives don’t realize how severe are the real cyber threats, and they assume their security experts can deal with every threat by themselves. In reality the situation is very different. The severe infiltration into the network of American vending giant Target, for example, is one proof; the Heartbleed vulnerability – an extremely severe threat hidden for years deep in the infrastructure of the world wide web – is another. The American NSA knew about the existence of Heartbleed for years before it was made public, a good example of a government agency hiding a severe cyber threat from the public.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

Information security experts claim that Australian intelligence agencies aren’t doing enough to share critical information with the public, and the situation has become so severe that civilian companies started considering cyber-attack damages to be routine expenditures. McKenzie himself admits that cyber security is not always the first priority as far as government officials are concerned.

The industry, adds McKenzie, stores immense amounts of data. It must improve its security standards and follow them strictly, for the industry’s sake as well as for the sake of the entire country. The Australian government has begun promoting the issue recently, by establishing a national cyber command through which intelligence agencies can cooperate with civilian organizations.