We suddenly find ourselves living in a world where nothing seems off limits to nation-state attacks. Conflicts between nations are no longer confined to the ground, sea and air, as cyberspace has become a potential new and global battleground. There are increasing risks of governments attempting to exploit or even weaponize software to achieve national security objectives, and governmental investments in cyber offense are continuing to grow.
In fundamental ways, this new plane of battle is different from those of the past. It starts with the fact that cyberspace does not exist in a clearly tangible form in the physical world. But beyond this, cyberspace in fact is produced, operated, managed and secured by the private sector. Governments obviously play all sorts of critical roles, but the reality is that the targets in this new battle – from submarine cables to datacenters, servers, laptops and smartphones – in fact are private property owned by civilians.
