Defending against cyberwar: How the cybersecurity elite are working to prevent a digital apocalypse (cover story PDF)

Cyberwar has evolved from the theoretical to the ominous. TechRepublic went inside one of the defenders vs. hackers war games that’s helping countries prepare to defend themselves. This download provides the magazine version of the article as a free PDF for registered TechRepublic and ZDNet members. The online version of this story is available here.

From the ebook:

In the doorway of a low-ceilinged room with harsh strip lighting, Klaid Magi is looking tired. Behind him, the mess suggests this has not been a standard day at the office. The bins are overflowing with empty Coke cans, the desks are covered in snack wrappers, and the room probably smelled a whole lot fresher a few hours earlier.

Magi’s team, a small band of about two dozen now-weary security experts, wander between the rows of PCs and whiteboards scrawled with notes, gradually recovering from a day spent as the last defense of a tiny nation against a massive cyberattack.

Magi’s usual job is running Estonia’s Computer Emergency Response Team, but today he’s been in charge of protecting the fictional country of Berylia from unknown aggressors. The team of defenders, operating from a nondescript tower block in a suburb of the Estonian capital Tallinn, is just one of a number taking part in an international cyberdefence exercise aimed at preparing them to tackle the real thing.

The two-day exercise, organized by a NATO-affiliated cyberdefence think tank, aims to test the skills of these teams at defending a range of technology—from PCs and servers to air traffic control systems.

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PDF