Cyber attacks on hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic showed just how vulnerable our vital healthcare providers can be. How can we bring about cyberpeace and what would that world look like?
The full danger and the immorality of criminal attacks in cyberspace was made clear during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. It brought to the surface ongoing attacks, cybercrime and nation state attacks on, of all things, hospitals and healthcare authorities.
Less than a month after the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a pandemic, INTERPOL warned that hospitals around the world were being targeted by ransomware attacks, designed to lock them out of their IT systems until they paid a ransom to the criminals.
Shocking as it may seem that criminals would target healthcare providers during the worst pandemic in living memory, this activity is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to threats to cyberpeace. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2021 identified “cybersecurity failure” as the fourth largest clear and present danger facing the world, behind infectious diseases, livelihood crises and extreme weather events.
There is a cyberwar being fought and it manifests in not only criminal activity and attacks by nation states but also in abuse and threats, directed particularly at women and minorities, and damaging disinformation campaigns. It doesn’t have to be like this, however.
“In cyberspace,” says Stéphane Duguin, CEO of the CyberPeace Institute, “everyone — citizens, governments, private sector, civil society — has a role to play. This collective action is essential to promoting justice, effecting change and ensuring human security, dignity and equity – achieving cyberpeace.”
The Cyberpeace Institute is working to create a world where safe and universal internet access is the norm. We spoke to some of our members about what cyberpeace means, and how we can achieve it.
Establishing rules to protect people
Latha Reddy, Co-chair of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, says that cyberpeace will come “when we are all able to use cyberspace as a medium of communication which is safe, secure, open and stable”. For too many people worldwide, that isn’t the case today.