Cyber Attack Emergency Response Team Being Created In Israel

Israel is in the process of creating a cyber attack emergency response team to deal with mounting security threats that both they and countries around the world are facing. The government sponsored task force will be designed to help both businesses and citizens cope with the security threats.

The country’s National Cyber Bureau will launch the cyber emergency response teams later this year. The employees will handle various types of attack threats in the finance and energy realm. The Israel cyber attack program will also share threat information with the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security designated the center as the go-to resource for all state and local governments.

Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that a cyber attack on the power grid is a matter of “if” and not “when.” The United States, Mexico, and Canada engaged in power grid cyber threat drill in November in an effort better access the fallout and train emergency responders. As previously reported by The Inquisitr, the National Society of Civil Engineers gave the vital piece of infrastructure a D+ grade during an annual review of governmental programs and infrastructure in America.

Israel’s National Cyber Bureau Head Rami Efrati feels that cyber hackers are increasingly engaging in sophisticated attacks on data centers and web-hosting servers. South Korea’s alleged massive theft of credit card holder’s personal information sparked a major exodus of top executives at financial firms last week, according to a Bloomberg. “Cyber attacks are a way of life, both in Israel and in many other places in the world. Each high profile incident brings a new dimension of awareness,” Efrati said.

Cyber warfare is one of the top five concerns for the insurance industry, according to a Towers Watson survey of insurance executives around the world who consider attacks on essential computers among the extreme risks they worry about which could rattle the world to its core.

Towers Watson Senior Risk Consultant Stephen Lowe had this to say about the increased danger of cyber attacks:

“Much as we would have expected pandemics and natural catastrophes to figure prominently in insurers’ extreme risk thinking, the high rankings of concerns such as cyber-warfare and a major data compromise in the cloud [user-submitted idea] illustrate how the industry is keeping up to date with risk assessment. The kinds of risks that could wipe out an insurance business do inevitably evolve over time, so we were very encouraged to see this degree of engagement for ma broad sample of the industry.”

Do you feel the power grid faces a significant threat due to cyber attacks?