US Technologies and Trade Secrets at Risk in Cyber space

The threat to the technological solutions and to the secrets of the United States in the cyber space is relevant.  Foreign Organization, mainly Chinese and Russian are hunting for sensitive information of an economic and industrial nature, in public and private sectors.

To denounce the actions under discussion is a report presented to Congress by the Office of the National  Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX) that alerts the institutions on the possible interference in the governative affairs by partner and “hostile” states.

The proliferation of malicious software, hacktivist actions, prevalence of cyber tool sharing, and routing of operations through third countries make it difficult to attribute responsibility for computer network intrusions. Of course there are also foreign collectors of sensible informations that are interested in all aspects of US economic activity and technology in the following areas:

• Information and communications technology (ICT).
• Business information that pertains to supplies of scarce natural resources or that provides foreign actors an edge in negotiations with US businesses or the US Government.
• Military technologies.
• Civilian and dual-use technologies in sectors likely to experience fast growth, such as clean energy and health care/pharmaceuticals-

Companies and governments are forced by events to support a significant economic cost for prevention and intrusion defense and the direct loss of intellectual property.

In this scenario there are also companies who are not aware of the threat they facing and often they have to manage late situation of crisis related a suffered attack carried out against them. Those  companies usually do not report what happened to reduce the harm caused to their corporate image and reputation with investors, customers and employees.

Latest data presented during several conferences show that the direct and indirect damage caused by cybercrime activities has a global amounted little less than $ 400 billion. Next year, the costs could easily double, following the current trend.

Just to refer to a recent official data, the England a few days ago said to have suffered so far in 2011 as many as 24 billion pounds.

China, Russia called out as cyberspy hotbeds

ONCIX Report