Cyber Security

Simon Ashby and Andy Phippen

Those of us born prior to 1985 will remember a time before the Internet and the central role that computers, smartphones and tablets have come to play in all our lives. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, security was primarily a physical problem, with an emphasis on locks, doors, etc. Paper and manual (human-driven) processes were the norm. Even as computers and the Internet began to take over our lives in the 1990s, organisations retained the capability to operate without computers due to their limited processing power, and paper records remained dominant. In addition, those who did use computers generally had little network access and interconnection across systems. In both cases, security beyond physical and basic access control was not needed.

However, in 2016 and beyond we have entered a fully digital age, as this chapter will explain. Data are almost all electronic and increasingly stored on the “cloud”, and 99.9% of systems and processes are driven by information and communication technology (ICT). Few organisations retain the ability to operate without ICT support, and even where it might still be possible to do so there are a declining number of employees with the necessary