I think I live in cyberspace, as everything from my geyser to the air conditioner, cell phone to the car, coffee maker to the food processor work on the computer technology. From getting up in the morning to going to bed in the night, I am so incredibly surrounded by the computers that I have almost forgot to realize that these are computers.
Decades ago, cyberspace was in its embryonic stage and was actually tough to understand as its meaning was confined to the network of computers connecting a few organizations virtually. But, the scenario today is utterly different as every string that connects us with another string is connected by computers and the internet. Be it a politician, businessman, a common man, bureaucrat or ethicist, everyone is so damn affected by issues related to the internet. The name given to such issues is cyber security issues.
Every habitat of this cyberspace confronts with different cyber security issues and the variety is so high that a single issue hardly gets so viral that everyone can understand it. There are copious issues, questions and answers that remain so poorly understood by the masses. Hence, we need to be more knowledgeable and involved in order to understand more and think harder about the new cyber threats that pop up almost every day in the cyberspace we inhabit.
I really worry, “if the cyber anxiety among the nations tightens on cybersecurity issues, privacy issues and hacking issues then there would be a devastating cyber war”. The possibility of cyber war is so high that the business of cyber security is expanding massively and so are the special army units with cyber defence techniques. Cyber threats have so badly taken over our minds that we are ready to compromise with our privacy.
If I can ever imagine about the cyber war, the only thing that strikes my mind is:
Cyberwar would not be limited to the armies fighting with each other at the border or in the air, in fact, it would be beyond that. The cyber potent country will hack the tools of other nations` which are used to establish the network and disable them, i.e. the message encoding machines that are used to convey the troop movement and other vital information during the war would be destroyed, the communication channel, the transportation and other crucial organizations will be wiped away.
In simpler words the victory will be the fate of a cyber potent country or there will be no victory because the whole space will come to a stand still.
What we actually need to understand?
The age of Technology moves much faster than the human age. Every other day a new technology takes birth leaving the earlier ones behind. For example, there was a time when Roadrunner was the super fast computer, but, within a few years it was out of league of supercomputers as new technology with new possibilities came up ans there were other supercomputers faster than Roadrunner. It was a week before when I started writing about Moto 360 and Asus Zen Watch, but, finally when I thought of publishing it I found that LG Smartwatch was in the market with enhanced features. In this case, it was a matter of a few days and I had to think of rewriting the review. This is how technology is moving at an unimaginable speed and will keep on moving.
No one can really predict the future or fate of the cyberspace. The theories and trends we believe today, can be amazingly different in the near future. For example, the clogged water evaporates with the heat, but, we never know where the each evaporated water molecule actually goes and which water molecule is going to evaporate next. The only part of the theory we know as of now is that it is the heat that causes evaporation. There can be much more to know about the same in future.
So, is the case with the facts and believes related to cyber security. We can never predict the upcoming threats and the sustainability of the security measures which are the best in today`s date. There are threats we know and there are threats we know that we do not know about and then there are threats that are yet unknown about cyber security.
Had such threats been known to us at the time of inception of the computer world, the human race would have restricted its exposure to it. Well! this would also have proved a fatal decision because there would have been something else that would have replaced computer world with its own boons and curses.
Hence, more important is building proper understanding and enacting thoughtful responses towards every new possibility cyberspace can offer us. In short the inhabitants of the cyber world have to be vigilant enough to manage and understand the risks that are complementary with its comforts and joys – this is exactly what we need to understand.