ABSOLUTE mayhem. That is the world without cybersecurity. Personal data will be open to everyone, as there will be no encryption, no privacy, no secrecy. All devices are exposed as there will be no access control. Everyone can be someone else and fake news will be the standard and democratic elections will be a sham as there will be no integrity validation.
Vitaly Kamluk, Director of Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) for Asia Pacific (APAC) at Kaspersky said that a world with no cybersecurity is possible, but wondered if anyone wanted to live in such an environment as he deep dived into the alternate realities of a world free of cybersecurity companies, solutions, and services. This he told the 8th Cybersecurity Weekend attended by more than 30 top IT journalists from the region, and revealed a possible digital dystopia once the industry of online defense is removed from the equation.
Removing the cyber defense industry opens up wide doors for criminals to exploit users’ data–from financial information, possible health issues, travel plans, spending, and more.
Imagine huge numbers of fraudulent purchases, with everyone being able to claim one’s identity to purchase and even transfer money. Electronic voting and surveys can be easily rigged to someone’s favor. No one will have a private account online, in fact, because there is no access control, nothing will be private. News and information will be untrustworthy. Basically, anything can be faked in a world without cybersecurity.
“I see a world without cybersecurity as a digital dystopia where no one can fully harness the opportunities brought about by the latest technologies that we have in our hands. Without companies and solutions working in the background to protect our data, our identity, the news we consume, and the applications and devices we use, we will be left on our own to wade through the risks and I am sure no one would choose to live in a chaotic world like this. Today, cybersecurity is often an invisible part of our life which we take for granted, but we owe it almost everything we have achieved as a civilization,” Kamluk added.
When it comes to risks, Kamluk also revealed in his presentation that Kaspersky from July 2021 to August 2022 alone, the global cybersecurity company has detected and blocked over 7.2 billion attacks by malicious objects including malware and malicious web content worldwide.
From August 2021 to July 2022, APAC appears to be a vulnerable region. One in every three (35 percent) detections of malicious objects detected by Kaspersky solutions globally were targeting users from the region. India, Japan, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia are the top five countries in terms of infection attempts.
“It is projected that cybersecurity spending globally is set to balloon to $460 billion in the coming years, almost double the 2021 cumulative expenditures and almost as big as current total GDP of Thailand, for example. The current threat landscape can take this projection up a few notches if we are to consider the real situation worldwide. So, it is natural to ask why we are investing so much into cybersecurity and wouldn’t it be worth saving all this money for something else,” Kamluk said.
Chris Connell, Managing Director for Asia Pacific and Vice President for Global Sales and Network at Kaspersky, went back to the company’s beginning in 1997 when no one would have known that the world would be fighting one malware every hour without Kaspersky’s heuristic analysis technology.
In 2015, the world without Kaspersky would also not have learned of an unprecedented $1B cyber-robbery stolen in about two years from financial institutions worldwide by the Carbanak cybercriminal group. Together with INTERPOL, Europol, and authorities from different countries, Kaspersky uncovered the criminal plot behind the greatest heist of the century.
Free decryptors will also not be an advocacy of many without Kaspersky co-founding No More Ransom initiative, which since then grew from four partners to 188, contributing 136 decryption tools and helping over 1.5 million people worldwide decrypt their devices.
“In 2017, we kicked off an industry benchmark with the launch of Kaspersky’s Global Transparency Initiative, as part of which we became the first cybersecurity company to offer its source code for third-party review. Five years after and with 25 years of expertise on our sleeves, we are now a team of over 4,500 professionals, creating a cybersecurity ecosystem as well as developing its own operating and IT systems that are inherently secure to bring on a cyber-immune future. Because we know the world needs cybersecurity and we are ready to do our part to bring on a safer future for everyone,” said Connell.
