Jerry Petersen
Steve Orrin, the chief technology officer at Intel Federal, sees a trickle-down effect in terms of the way cybersecurity threats impact various kinds of organizations.
Sophisticated Attacks Against Government Systems
Orrin made this observation during an interview on the Access Control podcast, where he said that while bigger targets, such as the federal government, initially end up at the receiving end of sophisticated cyberattacks, those same techniques are eventually used against regulated industries, such as finance, and others.
“So you can almost think of the kind of security threats that the government is dealing with today and in the future trickle down to the broader industry over time as the tools and techniques become more pervasive to not just nation-state actors, but to cyber criminals and hackers across the world,” Orrin explained, adding that what start out as “the most complex and most elegant attacks” eventually become “commoditized.” Consequently, working with the public sector allows one to perceive the kinds of threats commercial organizations will face in the future.
Cyberattack Trends
At present, Orrin sees the federal government wrestling primarily with supply chain attacks, where attackers seek to exploit vulnerabilities in otherwise legitimate software or hardware systems. The Intel CTO also noted complex, coordinated campaigns targeting government assets carried out by nation-state actors.
Another noteworthy trend involves stealthier malware being employed not just against government but industry as well.
“They want to get in there and be persistent and not be detected,” Orrin said, adding that the government is now looking into “those more deep-into-the-system kind of attacks or attacks that scale across multiple systems, taking advantage of various vulnerabilities strung together into a cohesive malware or advanced persistent threat campaign.”
