A report by the World Economic Forum reveals business leaders believe a “catastrophic cyber event” is on its way. Here’s everything you should know.
What is the upcoming catastrophic cyber event all about?
This year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland was dull of upcoming predictions including decoding brain waves and global catastrophic cyber events. “The most striking finding that we’ve found is that 93 percent of cyber leaders, and 86 percent of cyber business leaders, believe that the geopolitical instability makes a catastrophic cyber event likely in the next two years. This far exceeds anything that we’ve seen in previous surveys,” stated Jeremy Jurgens. Jurgens is the managing director of WEF
Jurgens in his presentation highlighting the Global Security Outlook Report for the year cited a recent cyberattack. The attack was aimed at shutting down Ukraine’s military ability. Additionally, it also closed electricity production parts across Europe. “This is a global threat. It calls for a global response and enhanced and coordinated action,” stated Jürgen Stock, during the presentation. Stock is the Secretary-General of Interpol. Additionally, he stated “bad actors” are reaping from cybercrime. And this should encourage world leaders to come together and make facing “new sophisticated tools” their priority.
Solutions to future attacks
Albania, a nation that recently experienced a massive cyberattack is working with its larger allies to ward off criminals. The nation is now serving as a laboratory to realize the upcoming catastrophic cyber event. Additionally, cybercrime as an industry is expected to grow to $10.5 trillion in 2025 from $3 trillion in 2015. This could make it the third largest global economy following US and China.
“Let’s imagine an exponential multitude of viruses that mutate every day exponentially while not threatening our body, but the bodies we live in, our organizations, our countries, our system, then, you know, it could be just apocalypse. It’s about viruses that can not only block our way of living but can control it and deviate it,” stated Edi Rama, the Albanian PM.