The earliest recorded example of a cyberattack was Creeper, a 1971 computer worm that turned up on a number of mainframe computers attached via the pre-internet ARPANET. Although Creeper did not create digital wreckage — it merely generated the taunting message “I’m the creeper: catch me if you can” — it laid the groundwork for a seemingly endless stream of assaults aimed at the global computer environment.
But at the start of a new decade, cyberattacks are showing no signs of abating. According to Al Alper, CEO of a pair of Wilton-headquartered information security firms — Absolute Logic and CyberGuard360 — cybersecurity will always be a problem as long as computer users make the same mistakes while online.
“People are creatures of habit,” lamented Alper. “They know that they don’t have Nigerian uncles, but they still open those emails. They aren’t expecting a package delivered to their front doors, but they still open a PDF of a packing slip. You really can’t stop it. The No. 1 cause of breach is people. People do today what they did yesterday and until they are willing to change their behavior, the breaches are going to go on.”
One might imagine that in-house IT teams are ready for the new decade’s cybersecurity challenges, but Alper observed that many of these professionals are not up to speed on the always-evolving nature of this problem.
“The discipline demands that you have a real understanding of what an attack surface is,” he continued. “Over 80,000 new variants are released every day. If your job is just in IT, you’re not exposed to the threat vectors of t ..
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