Many developed nations are rushing to develop connected weapons as it not only gives them an advantage on the battlefield but also helps in gaining an upper hand, if in case, a World War 3 erupts.
However, not all seems to be good with these innovative weapons, as they are filled with many Cybersecurity risks that if aren’t addressed on time can lead to a catastrophic disaster.
For instance, a team of researchers from the Government Accountability Office gained access to nearly all major weaponry systems in United States that were in use or under development. In another case, the researchers could disable an entire defense system remotely, without being detected by the threat monitoring solutions. Reason, they were still using the default password for access authentication through an open source search and that helped the security teams not only infiltrate the network, but remain concealed throughout their assessment activities.
Thus, such shocking lapses in following healthy cyber hygiene could lead to disastrous consequences in the real world- an alert which should act like a wake up call to the Pentagon and to the White House as much of employees is working from home.
Although, a source from the Trump administration has disclosed that the government has done a lot of progress in re-aligning the country’s Cybersecurity measures, it isn’t sure what is in store in near future- as Joe Biden government will taking the governance reigns from January next year.
DOD says that modern systems prove efficient, only when they are safe to use and are well protected from snooping eyes of bad actors or adversaries. So, the federal agency wants the Cybersecurity approach to be on par with the technological developments happening in the field of warfare. Otherwise, US will lag behind in the state of digital warfare that is going to be the next future.
