Chapter 1. Cybersecurity in the Age of Digital Transformation
A worldwide pandemic brings manufacturing plants in China to a standstill, causing supply shortages and slowdowns at factories from Detroit to Yokohama. An Ethiopian airliner mysteriously nosedives minutes after takeoff, killing everyone on board; and less than six months later, on the other side of the world, the same make and model of aircraft crashes in almost exactly the same way. An unknown person tampers with the control systems at a water plant in Florida, increasing the amount of a chemical that’s ordinarily safe to use in water treatment but lethal at higher levels by more than 100 times. An extortionist uses artificial intelligence (AI) to convincingly re-create an individual’s voice to fake a kidnapping, and election officials worldwide worry that the same “deepfake” techniques—which can also manipulate images—will be used to undermine democratic elections. A Russian cyberattack on a satellite navigation system used by the Ukrainian military brings wind turbines hundreds of miles away in Germany to a standstill. And a lone attacker holds a major pipeline system for ransom, creating massive fuel shortages up and down the US East Coast.
These events are dramatic examples of how very fragile our daily lives, and the systems and processes they rely on, are today. This complex, intricate set of interconnections is created by the world’s overwhelming reliance on digital technologies for communication and collaboration, ...