The best defence against cyber attacks is good offence, and to prevail in the cyber security war, defence is not enough.
That was the word from Professor Basie von Solms, director for the Centre for Cyber Security at the University of Johannesburg (UJ); and Dr Petrus Duvenage, research associate at the Centre for Cyber Security at UJ. The two presented jointly at the ITWeb Security Summit 2014 in Sandton yesterday.
"In 2006, installing antivirus software was one of the easiest and most effective ways to protect your computer," said Von Solms. "However, in 2014, antivirus programs are totally useless," he added.
He explained that this is mainly because the antivirus approach is only defensive (reactive). "Cyber attacks have become so sophisticated that being only defensive against the cyber threats of 2014 means you have already lost the battle. We must start being more offensive or proactive.
"We need to move away from trying to build Maginot lines that look bulletproof but are actually easy to get around. We need to work on new strategies to make attacks more difficult, and even enable those who are targeted to fight back," said Von Solms.
He pointed out that cyber security is now going to the offensive, with governments, intelligence agencies, law enforcement and private companies evaluating the possibility to adopt an offensive approach to defend their assets from cyber attacks or to assert its supremacy.
Nonetheless, Von Solms also noted that enterprises need a balanced defensive/offensive approach to win the cyber war.
One of the strategies to do so is cyber counter intelligence, Duvenage noted. "Applying offensive counter-intelligence methodologies from the humint (human intelligence) and techint (technical intelligence) disciplines against specific threats enables organisations to pro-actively thwart and engage hostile attacks," said Duvenage.
"Exploiting the attacker's malicious actions to your own benefit, is the missing part of the information-security approach for the private sector."
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